Opinion ID: 2525263
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Connection Between Conduct and Injury

Text: No Navegar agent, of course, participated with Ferri in the 101 California Street massacre. Indeed, Navegar, which generally sold only to wholesale distributors, did not directly provide Ferri with any weapons. Thus Navegar, stressing that Ferri, rather than itself, directly caused the deaths and injuries at 101 California Street, argues that liability for third party criminal conduct generally may be imposed only where there exists a special relationship between the defendant and either the victim or the third party actor, a requirement which is indisputably not present here. We rejected a similar no-duty claim in Weirum v. RKO General, Inc. (1975) 15 Cal.3d 40, 123 Cal.Rptr. 468, 539 P.2d 36 ( Weirum ). The defendant radio station had, by a heavily advertised mobile giveaway contest, foreseeably incited a race along Los Angeles freeways. One of the drivers racing to the giveaway site negligently forced the car of the plaintiffs' decedent off the road, causing a fatal accident. (Id. at pp. 43-45, 123 Cal.Rptr. 468, 539 P.2d 36.) To the defendant's contention, based on section 315 of the Restatement Second of Torts, [3] that it owed the decedent no duty of care because of the lack of a special relationship, we answered that this rule has no application if the plaintiffs complaint, as here, is grounded upon an affirmative act of defendant which created an undue risk of harm. ( Weirum, supra, at p. 48, 123 Cal.Rptr. 468, 539 P.2d 36.) We continued: The rule stated in section 315 [of the Restatement Second of Torts] is merely a refinement of the general principle embodied in section 314 that one is not obligated to act as a `good Samaritan.' [Citations.] This doctrine is rooted in the common law distinction between action and inaction, or misfeasance and nonfeasance. Misfeasance exists when the defendant is responsible for making the plaintiffs position worse, i.e., defendant has created a risk. Conversely, nonfeasance is found when the defendant has failed to aid plaintiff through beneficial intervention. As section 315 illustrates, liability for nonfeasance is largely limited to those circumstances in which some special relationship can be established. If, on the other hand, the act complained of is one of misfeasance, the question of duty is governed by the standards of ordinary care discussed above. [¶] Here, there can be little doubt that we review an act of misfeasance to which section 315 is inapplicable. Liability is not predicated upon defendant's failure to intervene for the benefit of decedent but rather upon its creation of an unreasonable risk of harm to him. ( Weirum, supra, 15 Cal.3d at p. 49, 123 Cal.Rptr. 468, 539 P.2d 36, fn. omitted.) [4] Here, as in Weirum, plaintiffs seek not imposition of a duty of rescue or prevention, but rather, application of the ordinary duty (Civ.Code, § subd. (a)) to conduct one's activities with reasonable care for the safety of others. Plaintiffs' complaint is not that Navegar neglected to take actions that would have averted or alleviated a danger of attack from Ferri to which plaintiffs were already subject, but that Navegar's acts in making and marketing the TEC-9/DC9 unreasonably increased plaintiffs' risk of harm from such an attack. Navegar responds that misfeasance and nonfeasance are concepts too malleable, too subject to semantic manipulation, to serve as guides to duty. Though not sharply distinguishable in every case (see Adams v. City of Fremont (1998) 68 Cal. App.4th 243, 288, 80 Cal.Rptr.2d 196 [police conduct toward suicidal gunman could be characterized as overly confrontational action or as failure to act sensitively]), misfeasance and nonfeasance do mark a significant conceptual border. In any event, recognition of a distinction between action and inaction operates in favor of defendants; without such a distinction, all cases would fall within the ordinary rule that each person is responsible for his want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his property or person (Civ. Code, § 1714, subd. (a)) regardless of the existence of a special relationship between the defendant and the actor or victim. (See Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (1976) 17 Cal.3d 425, 435, fn. 5, 131 Cal.Rptr. 14, 551 P.2d 334 [special relationship requirement derives from the common law's distinction between misfeasance and nonfeasance, and its reluctance to impose liability for the latter].) Where, as here, the defendant's positive conduct of its business is claimed to have created or increased the risk of danger to the plaintiffs from attack by a third person, liability is not barred simply because the defendant had no special relationship with the third party actor or the victims. Nor does the fact that Navegar's conduct and plaintiffs' injuries are linked only through Ferri's criminal act (a fact that could go either to duty or to proximate cause) necessarily bar liability; California follows the general tort law (see Rest.2d Torts, § 302B) in permitting responsibility for a third party's negligent, intentionally tortious, or even criminal acts to be traced back to the defendant whose negligent conduct foreseeably created the risk of such acts. (See, e.g., Bigbee v. Pacific Tel. & Tel, Co. (1983) 34 Cal.3d 49, 58, 192 Cal.Rptr. 857, 665 P.2d 947; Richardson v. Ham (1955) 44 Cal.2d 772, 777, 285 P.2d 269.) Although this court has not previously been called upon to address the duty those who make or sell firearms owe to victims of gun violence, we have recognized on the part of those controlling other particularly dangerous instruments a duty of due care toward persons foreseeably injured by their misuse. [5] Decisions in many other jurisdictions, moreover, have recognized that defendant gun dealers, even absent any special relationship, may owe a duty not to create or increase the risk of danger from a third person's foreseeable negligent or criminal use of a firearm furnished or made available by the defendant. [6] As these cases illustrate, providers of guns may, under some circumstances, be held accountable for the foreseeable third party misuse of the weapon. Navegar's contention that its lack of a special relationship with Ferri, who misused defendant's gun for criminal purposes, eliminates all duty of care toward plaintiffs must be rejected.