Court Opinion

ID: 9623606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:37:47.179265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:32.121295
License: Public Domain

BAXTER, J.—I
respectfully dissent. In doing so, I agree with many of the criticisms leveled against the majority opinion by Justices Kennard and Brown. As they suggest, the majority have created a new, vague, dangerous, and unreasonable form of premises liability against persons who merely volunteer for limited caretaking activities on their neighbors’ land. The limits of the rule applied by the majority are not clearly articulated, and the majority’s recognition of possible liability in this case cannot be justified under the balancing test pertinent to the existence of a tort duty, as set forth in Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108 [70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496].
I write separately only because I am uncertain that either of the other dissenting opinions has isolated the precise principles which negate defendants’ duty in this case. Indeed, as the multiple opinions themselves demonstrate, the numerous authorities governing premises liability permit differing *1187shades of interpretation. However, we need not develop a “universal theory” on this subject in order to conclude, as a matter of law, that the instant defendants are not liable for the injury suffered by plaintiff Gilardo C. Alcaraz.
It is clear that one has no affirmative responsibility for the safety of property he or she does not “own, possess, or control.” (Isaacs v. Huntington Memorial Hospital (1985) 38 Cal.3d 112, 134 [211 Cal.Rptr. 356, 695 P.2d 653].) Rather, “the duty to take affirmative action for the protection of individuals coming on the land is grounded in the possession of the premises and the attendant right to control and manage the premises.” (Sprecher v. Adamson Companies (1981) 30 Cal.3d 358, 368 [178 Cal.Rptr. 783, 636 P.2d 1121], italics added.) Unless one’s possessory relationship to premises on which an injury occurred was sufficient to imply “control and supervisory power” over the cause of injury {ibid.), one cannot justly have assumed a “manage[ment]” duty to remedy or warn against a danger which one neither caused nor aggravated.
In determining whether occupiers of land should be liable for harm arising on adjacent property for which they disclaim possessory responsibility, the courts have considered numerous case-specific factors to decide whether the requisite power and duty to “supervis[e]” and “manage” the safety of the adjacent premises has fairly arisen. However, given the extreme facts before us, it is unnecessary here to reconcile every arguable ambiguity and inconsistency.
At the very least, nothing in the case law described at length by the majority and the dissents of Justices Kennard and Brown suggests that a person owes a duty to protect or warn against hazards which arise exclusively on the premises of another, and to which premises the danger is confined, when the person neither (1) caused or aggravated the dangerous condition, nor (2) holds any legal right of “supervisory” possession and control over the premises or the hazard, nor (3) has engaged in conduct suggesting the “de facto” assertion of such “supervisory” possession and control, nor (4) has derived any direct benefit which is linked to the hazard, nor (5) is vested with authority to remedy the specific danger. Indeed, there are no fair or rational grounds for imposing a duty of safety management on one who has none of these connections to the dangerous condition or the premises on which it is located.
We need go no further to decide this case. Even under the minimum standard I have just described, the instant trial court’s summary judgment for defendants was correct.
*1188The undisputed facts are that plaintiff was injured when, while walking on a strip of land owned by the City of Redwood City (City), he tripped on a broken water meter, which was also owned by the City and was located entirely on the City-owned strip. While defendants owned closely adjacent premises, the broken meter posed no danger to persons on defendants’ land. Conversely, defendants had no legal rights of possession and control in either the City-owned strip or the defective meter itself, which gave them supervisory and management powers over those areas.
Moreover, there is no evidence or argument that defendants derived any direct economic benefit from the City-owned strip, or from the broken meter itself. It is undisputed that defendants were not responsible for either the existence or the degree of the danger on premises they did not legally own, possess, or control. Nor is there the slightest evidence that defendants contributed to the danger by encouraging persons to traverse the area where the hazard was located. Of course, plaintiff does not contend that defendants had any authority to repair the broken meter, which was operated and maintained solely by City.
The majority nonetheless hold that there is a triable issue of defendants’ duty at least to warn of the danger, or to cordon it off. The majority’s conclusion seems premised on the notion that by their conduct, defendants asserted, de facto, some form of “control” over the City-owned strip. Accordingly, the majority reason, a trier of fact should be free to hold defendants generally responsible for the reasonable safety of that area.
Like Justices Kennard and Brown, I disagree. Prior to plaintiff’s injury, defendants’ sole relationship to the premises on which plaintiff was injured —other than the adjacent nature of their own land—was that they mowed the lawn on the City-owned strip at the same time they mowed their own.
Contrary to the majority’s assertion, this evidence has no “tendency in reason” (Evid. Code, § 210) to prove that defendants asserted de facto “control” over the City-owned strip of a degree and nature which might impose a general duty to supervise and manage its safety. As Justice Kennard suggests, the mere fact that one enters his neighbor’s land from time to time, in order to conduct limited volunteer caretaking activities which have no relationship to hazardous conditions on the premises, obviously does not imply an assumption of supervisory control over all such hazards, with the attendant duty to manage them safely. To conclude otherwise, as the majority do, is both illogical and unfair. Such a conclusion is also bad public policy. Under facts like those presented here, the majority’s rule will discourage communitarian efforts to maintain the appearance of a neighbor’s neglected land.
*1189Indeed, the majority ultimately concede the weakness of their analysis. “[Standing alone,” they acknowledge, evidence that a landowner mowed his neighbor’s lawn would “generally” not establish “control” sufficient to impose a duty of safe management of the neighbor’s premises. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1167.) Hence, the majority bootstrap their result by holding additionally relevant and admissible, on the issue of “control,” the fact that after the accident in which plaintiff was injured, defendants fenced in the lawn, including the City-owned strip.
But even if postinjury conduct at the scene of an accident may sometimes be relevant and admissible on a disputed issue of “control” of the site, that principle is not logically applicable here. Morehouse v. Taubman Co. (1970) 5 Cal.App.3d 548 [85 Cal.Rptr. 308], the primary authority cited by the majority for this theory, illustrates its proper limits. There, the injured employee of a subcontractor simply sought to show that the general contractor, who was jointly involved at the site in the project which caused the injury, had not relinquished all “control” of workplace safety conditions at the point where the subcontractor’s employee had fallen from a wall. The employee presented evidence that the general contractor maintained a policy of installing guardrails around unprotected areas of similar elevation throughout the project area, and had placed such a guardrail at the site of the employee’s injury after he fell. This evidence was properly received, said the Court of Appeal, on the issue of control of the premises, “and as to whose duty it was under the contract to take such safety measures. [Citation.]” (Id. at p. 555, italics added.)
Thus, in Taubman, the very nature of the business relationship between two contractors created inherent uncertainty about the degree of responsibility for workplace safety retained by each in their joint efforts on the contracted project. Evidence that one or the other actually undertook safety duties on the site, both before and after the accident, was therefore probative on that issue.
Orthmann v. Apple River Campground, Inc. (7th Cir. 1985) 757 F.2d 909 is to similar effect. There, the court deemed relevant, on the issue of duty, the fact that defendants had entered another’s property without permission and cut down a tree thereon which had caused a swimming injury to defendants’ inner tube rental customer. However, the tree-cutting evidence was but one of numerous indications that, both before and after the accident, defendants had incorporated the property on which the tree was located as a recreational attraction of their business and, although they did not own the property, had “treated it as if they did.” (Id. at p. 913.)
Here, by contrast, there is no other basis for an inference that, at the time of plaintiff s accident, defendants maintained any relationship with the City-owned strip or the defective meter which implied responsibility for safe *1190management of that hazard. Under these circumstances, evidence of their later understandable response to plaintiff’s accident has no logical power either to create or to bolster such an inference.
In sum, evidence that defendants mowed the City-owned strip, and that they fenced the property after the accident, even when considered in combination, is not sufficient to create a triable issue that they asserted “supervisory” possession and control of the strip, thereby assuming a duty to protect or warn against a City-owned hazard on that land. It follows that the trial court did not err in awarding defendants summary judgment. (See Sprecher v. Adamson Companies, supra, 30 Cal.3d 358, 362.) Like Justices Kennard and Brown, I would therefore reverse the contrary judgment of the Court of Appeal.
BROWN, J., Dissenting.
This case should be governed by the venerable judicial maxim: “[I]f it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Unfortunately, the majority fails to heed this sensible advice, and today’s decision drastically enlarges the potential tort liability of thousands of California homeowners.
Until now both the rules for finding a duty and the rationale for imposing adjacent premises liability have been reasonably clear. The existence of “duty” is a question of law. (Thompson v. County of Alameda (1980) 27 Cal.3d 741, 750 [167 Cal.Rptr. 70, 614 P.2d 728, 12 A.L.R.4Ü1 701].) Legal duties are not discoverable facts of nature; they are limiting principles designed to reduce potentially infinite liability to manageable proportions. (Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (1976) 17 Cal.3d 425, 434 [131 Cal.Rptr. 14, 551 P.2d 334, 83 A.L.R.3d 1166]; Dillon v. Legg (1968) 68 Cal.2d 728, 739 [69 CaLRptr. 72, 441 P.2d 912, 29 A.L.R.3d 1316].) Until today, the imposition of a duty was ultimately a question of fairness.
Thus, property owners are liable for injuries on land they own, possess, or control; they are liable for injuries on adjacent property if their active negligence created an external effect which led to the injury; but when they have not created the external hazard and, as in this case, the question of control cannot be cleanly resolved, courts have prudently required an additional prerequisite for liability. In cases where the landowner or tenant might be liable for off-premises injuries, courts require evidence of substantial control, a clearly derived benefit from the use of the particular area that caused plaintiff’s injury, or some combination of control and benefit. Although not always articulated in the cases implicitly applying them, the logic of these rules provided a rational and intelligible basis for finding or rejecting liability in adjacent premises cases. Until today.
The majority opinion abrogates these essential limits. It jettisons the requirement that the defendant property owner derive a benefit directly from *1191the plaintiff’s use of the adjacent area where the injury occurred and, that restraint on liability removed, posits the liability of all property owners for injuries sustained on land over which, as this case pointedly demonstrates, they exercise only the most insubstantial cosmetic “control.” As if to underscore the limitless reaches of its holding, the majority leaves the legal question of whether any duty exists to the jury.
I
A
Two recent opinions of the Court of Appeal—both of which found landowners not liable for off-premises injuries and which the majority now peremptorily disapproves as precedent—illustrate the essential conditions for tort liability in the typical adjacent landowner case. In Swann v. Olivier (1994) 22 Cal.App.4th 1324 [28 Cal.Rptr.2d 23] (hereafter Swann), the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed a summary judgment in favor of a homeowners association the plaintiff sought to hold liable for injuries sustained in rough surf along a stretch of beach near San Clemente. The plaintiff, one of a party of birthday celebrants visiting a beach owned by the association, was injured while in the “ ‘surf’ of the public ocean, seaward of the mean high tide line that marks the border” of the association’s private property with the waters of the Pacific. (Id. at p. 1327.) He sued the association, alleging it had breached a duty to warn him of the dangerous condition of the surf. After the trial court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff appealed.
A unanimous Court of Appeal affirmed. Starting from “the commonsense rule that one generally cannot be liable, as a landowner, for injuries that occur on property outside one’s ownership, possession or control” (Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at p. 1329), Justice Sills went on to invoke the “corollary . . . that a landowner has no duty to warn of dangers beyond . . . her own property when the owner did not create those dangers.” (Id. at p. 1330, italics in original.) The rule of landowner nonliability for off-premises injuries, the court said, is subject to only two exceptions. “Landowners or businesses have been held liable for injuries not technically on their ‘premises’ when: [^D (1) they imposed or created some palpable external effect on the area where the plaintiff was injured; or [<JD (2) they received a special commercial benefit from the area of the injury plus had direct or de facto control of that area.” {Ibid., italics added.)
“The first exception,” the Swann court wrote, “needs no elaboration. Obviously one cannot leave a banana peel on a public sidewalk and escape *1192liability to the pedestrian who slips on it because one does not own the sidewalk.” (Swam, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at p. 1331, fn. omitted.) “The second category is commercial in nature. A review of five of the cases in this category shows that they are predicated on the ideas of ‘creation’ and ‘control,’ which can extend beyond the strict perimeters of the area to which one has title or a leasehold interest." (Ibid.) The Swann opinion went on to analyze in detail the five selected cases in which landowner liability had been upheld—including two relied on in the majority opinion, Schwartz v. Helms Bakery Limited (1967) 67 Cal.2d 232 [60 Cal.Rptr. 510, 430 P.2d 68], and Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc. (1946) 28 Cal.2d 394 [170 P.2d 5]—before concluding that they “all arose in commercial contexts, where the defendants received direct pecuniary benefits from the plaintiff’s use of the areas where the plaintiffs were injured.” (Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at p. 1333.)
“Moreover,” the Court of Appeal continued, “the defendants either directly created the risk (Schwartz) or exercised direct (Johnston) or de facto (Kopfinger [v. Grand Central Pub. Market (1964) 60 Cal.2d 852 (37 Cal.Rptr. 65, 389 P.2d 529)], Johnston and Southland [Corp. v. Superior Court (1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 656 (250 CaLRptr. 57)]) control over that area." (Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at p. 1333.) Applying these liability rules to the facts before it, the Court of Appeal in Swann concluded that “[b]ecause there was no commercial benefit to the defendants, nor creation or control by them of the hazards in the precise area where the injury occurred, we hold defendants owed no duty to warn the plaintiff of the dangerous condition of the ocean beyond their private beach.” (Ibid., fn. omitted.)
B
As an even more recent opinion by the First District Court of Appeal makes clear, the liability of landowners for injuries sustained on adjacent property requires proof of both a direct (or “special”) commercial benefit to the abutting landowner and “possession or control”; neither condition is sufficient alone. In Princess Hotels Internat., Inc. v. Superior Court (1995) 33 Cal.App.4th 645 [39 Cal.Rptr.2d 457] (hereafter Princess Hotels), a vacationing couple, staying at the defendant’s Acapulco hotel, went swimming in the adjacent ocean. Caught in a sudden undertow, large waves, and riptide currents, the plaintiff was seriously injured and her companion drowned. In the ensuing negligence and wrongful death actions, the trial court denied the hotel’s motion for summary judgment on the ground that it had “ ‘commercially benefited] from the adjacent beach,’ ” purportedly distinguishing Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 1324. (Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th *1193at p. 648.) The Court of Appeal issued a writ of mandate directing the trial court to enter summary judgment for the hotel.
Building on the opinion in Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 1324, Justice Peterson wrote that “[t]he present case seems to be Swann once removed: This is a suit against private adjacent landowners whose property abuts a public beach—owned and controlled by the Mexican government—in turn abutting the uncontrollable ocean. Swann provides compelling authority that the [defendant hotel owner] had no duty to warn as a matter of law.” (Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th at p. 650.) “One must be sensitive,” the opinion in Princess Hotels observed, “to the obvious fact that the hotel does substantially commercially benefit from its oceanfront premises, and that the proximity of the Pacific Ocean no doubt draws substantial numbers of paying guests. The argument that because of this commercial benefit the hotel bears a duty to warn its guests of the ocean’s dangers simply ignores the law of this state. The California cases, as correctly analyzed by Swann, require control as well as a commercial benefit; and the ocean is simply not within the control of humankind.” (Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th at pp. 651-652, italics in original.)
C
These two recent opinions do not stand alone. They build on a thick strand of precedent whose persistent (if not always articulated) theme is the commonsense requirement that before one can be liable for injuries sustained on land she does not own, the defendant must have exploited the adjacent premises in a way that was not only “direct,” “special,” or “unique,” but carried with it an advantage arising out of the plaintiffs use of the very feature of the adjacent property that led to the injury. Where these prerequisites are met, the duty properly applies even though the defendant has no ownership or possessory interest in the adjacent property, and only exercises “control” over part of it. As the cases demonstrate, however, the precise nature of the “control” necessary to support the possibility of tort liability differs markedly from the control exercised by one who owns or possesses real property.
The majority’s response to these reasoned analyses is simply to sweep aside these limiting principles as “dicta,” and to disapprove the language in Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 1324, and Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th 645, that presents an obstacle to its result. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1164-1166.) However, as the Swann opinion convincingly demonstrates, the handful of reported adjacent premises cases in which the landowner has been held liable for injuries sustained on property the defendant did not own *1194can only be rationally explained by the fact that the defendant obtained some tangible, substantial benefit from a feature of the adjacent property that caused the plaintiff’s injury.
As the Court of Appeal’s opinion in Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 1324, put it, the governing liability rule in these cases requires that the defendant landowner “receive[] direct pecuniary benefits from the plaintiffs use of the areas where the plaintiffs were injured.” (Id. at p. 1333, italics added.) It is not enough that the plaintiff was injured on adjacent property whose features may otherwise have provided some incremental advantage to the defendant, however attenuated, and it is certainly not sufficient that the defendant obtained no benefit whatever from the adjoining property. Rather, liability in this handful of cases is grounded in some characteristic of the adjacent property whose use by the plaintiff directly benefited the defendant.
Viewed from that perspective, the cases upholding landowner tort liability for injuries on property the defendant does not own or possess comprise a limited and coherent exception to the general rule of nonliability. In South-land Corp. v. Superior Court (1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 656 [250 CaLRptr. 57], for example, the plaintiff patron’s use of an adjacent lot in which to park his car directly benefited the defendant convenience store owner—additional customers and revenue were the direct result—and it was the plaintiff’s use of the parking lot that led to his injuries. In Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc., supra, 28 Cal.2d 394, the plaintiff fell on an unlit private walk leading to defendant’s restaurant, a passageway that had been used by restaurant patrons as a convenient means of entry. Again, the plaintiff’s use of the precise area where the injury occurred—the adjacent walkway— directly benefited the defendant’s business. In Schwartz v. Helms Bakery Limited, supra, 67 Cal.2d 232, the defendant bakery directly benefited from the plaintiff’s use of a public street to reach the defendant’s bread truck. And in Ross v. Kirby (1967) 251 Cal.App.2d 267 [59 Cal.Rptr. 601], the plaintiff was injured when she fell on a low-lying drainage berm the defendant restaurant owner had invited his customers to cross in order to use a rear entrance to his business, clearly another instance in which the property owner obtained a direct and business-related benefit from the very feature of the adjacent property that contributed to the plaintiff’s injuries.
Indeed, every case relied on by the majority as upholding landowner liability for injuries sustained on adjacent property involved just such a “direct” commercial benefit. In none did the court uphold tort liability absent a palpable advantage to the defendant from the plaintiff’s use of a feature of the adjacent property that caused the injury. Each of these cases involved uncertainties about the “control” the defendant landowner exercised over the adjacent property.
*1195In Southland Corp. v. Superior Court, supra, 203 Cal.App.3d 656, 666-667, for example, the Court of Appeal relied on a combination of seven factors to uphold the store owner’s tort liability for injuries its customer suffered after being beaten in the adjacent parking lot. None of these factors included outright ownership, possession or control of the parking lot. But what the court called an “apparent” nonexclusive right to use the lot for customer parking, together with limited parking on defendant’s premises, knowledge that customers regularly used the lot, a failure to take action to discourage such use, an obvious commercial benefit from the additional customer parking, and repeated problems with juvenile loiterers, led the court to conclude that the issue of “control” should not “be resolved solely by reference to a property boundary line and the fortuitous circumstance” that the plaintiff was attacked a few feet beyond the boundary line. Instead, although the Court of Appeal could “not conclude that these circumstances establish that [defendants] did exercise control over the adjacent lot,” in combination they were sufficient to send the case to the jury. (Id. at p. 667.)
In Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc., supra, 28 Cal.2d 394, the tenant restaurant owner had encouraged his patrons to park in an adjacent service station lot, gaining access to the restaurant by walking across a narrow “parkway” and stepping down a few inches from a low wall onto a private walk leading directly to a side entrance. The plaintiff customer misjudged the height of the wall one night and, stepping into darkness, fell and broke her hip. This court reversed a judgment of nonsuit and held that the plaintiff’s evidence supported a finding that the restaurant tenant was negligent, despite the fact that the injury occurred on that part of the premises he neither leased nor occupied. The plaintiff presented evidence, we said, “that the tenant. . . assumed some responsibility for, and exercised control over, the means of lighting the approaches to the side entrance . . . .” (Id. at p. 401.) By installing a neon sign a few feet above a single light illuminating the side entrance, and connecting the sign and the light to a common switch, a jury could have found that the restaurant operator “had a limited right of control over this portion of the premises and of the means of illuminating the entranceway,” knew of the attendant danger at night, and failed to warn business visitors of the risk. (Ibid.)
In Ross v. Kirby, supra, 251 Cal.App.2d 267, the back door to defendant’s restaurant fronted directly onto an adjoining public parking lot, and three feet from “an irregularly shaped asphalt drainage berm” paralleling defendant’s building; half of the berm’s four-inch width lay on city-owned property, the other half on the property adjoining defendant’s lot. (Id. at p. 268.) Relying on Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc., supra, 28 Cal.2d 394, the Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment of liability against the restaurant *1196operator. Why? Not because defendants “controlled the walkway,” but because they “knew the berm was present and by the location of the back door, invited the general public to enter from the parking lot. Thus, they derived a special benefit apart from the ordinary and accustomed use of the walkway.” (Ross v. Kirby, supra, 251 Cal.App.2d at p. 270.) The court also relied on substantial evidence that the berm could not be seen because the white paint the city had applied to it had worn off that part paralleling defendant’s restaurant, a condition supporting “a logical inference . . . that the foot traffic from the parking lot to the back door of the restaurant caused the paint to wear off.” (Id. at p. 271.)
We relied on Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc., supra, 28 Cal.2d 394, and Ross v. Kirby, supra, 251 Cal.App.2d 267, among other cases, in Schwartz v. Helms Bakery Limited, supra, 67 Cal.2d 232, where we summed up—and even may have broadened—the liability rule at work in these cases. The plaintiff, a child of four acting at the suggestion of the defendant bakery truck driver to meet him up the street to buy a doughnut, was struck by an automobile as he crossed in the middle of the block. We reversed a judgment of nonsuit, stating, in pre-Rowland v. Christian language (Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108 [70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496]), that “[a]n invitor bears a duty to warn an invitee of a dangerous condition existing on a public street or sidewalk adjoining his business which, because of the invitor’s special benefit, convenience, or use of the public way, creates a danger.” (Schwartz v. Helms Bakery Limited, supra, 67 Cal.2d at pp. 239-240, fn. omitted, italics added.) Although Justice Tobriner’s opinion for the court asserted that “[t]he crucial element” on which liability depends “is control” (id., at p. 239), it is evident from the facts of the case that “control” in any meaningful sense has all but disappeared from the liability equation. It is replaced by the defendant’s knowledge of “a dangerous condition existing on a public street or sidewalk adjoining [defendant’s] business.” (Ibid.) This was so, the court in Schwartz reasoned, because the “premises may include such means of ingress and egress as a customer may reasonably be expected to use.” (Ibid.)
In each of these cases, the equivocal character of the defendant property owner’s actual “control” over the adjacent property was supplemented—and occasionally replaced—by the commonsense perception that, because the defendant had derived a direct, business-related benefit from the use made by the plaintiff of the very feature of the adjoining property that led to the injury in suit, tort liability was properly a matter for the trier of fact to determine. However rough-and-ready it may appear in theory, this reading of the case law has an instinctive appeal. Imposing liability on a property owner for injuries sustained on adjoining land seems sound in these cases
*1197not so much because the defendant exercised “control” over the adjacent property in the same sense an occupier “controls” land she owns or leases, but because the nexus between the plaintiff’s injury, the causal role of some feature of the adjoining property, and the related benefit to the defendant property owner, make liability appropriate.
Thus the formulation by the Court of Appeal in Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th 1324, and Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th 645, is accurate. A property owner who receives “ ‘direct pecuniary benefits from the plaintiffs’] use of the areas where the plaintiffs were injured’ and ‘either directly created the risk [citation] or exercised direct [citation] or de facto [citations] control over that area’ ” may be found liable for the plaintiff’s injury. (Princess Hotels, supra, 33 Cal.App.4th at p. 649, quoting Swann, supra, 22 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1331-1333, italics in original.)
Of course, the corollary also applies. In the absence of a direct benefit derived from the very feature of the adjoining property that caused the plaintiff’s injury, no liability should attach. The majority insists that the result in Johnston v. De La Guerra Properties, Inc., supra, 28 Cal.2d 394, would have been the same if the plaintiff, instead of having been injured on a defective walk adjacent to the defendant’s restaurant, had been a social guest who suffered a like injury while approaching the defendant’s residence. I disagree. Indeed, as I read these cases, the office of the so-called “benefit” requirement is to limit the potential for tort liability in adjacent premises litigation by identifying a causally significant feature to serve as a functional substitute for the ownership or possession that, by definition, is absent from these adjacent premises liability cases. That a “direct” or “special” benefit to the defendant landowner should have been singled out is hardly surprising. Benefit is frequently the pivot on which legal duties, and liability for their breach, turn.
II
It is possible the majority is impliedly adopting a new rule in the aftermath—almost 30 years on—of this court’s opinion in Rowland v. Christian, supra, 69 Cal.2d 108, and is now obliterating altogether the link between a direct commercial benefit and a corresponding legal duty that has long served as the underlying basis for liability in the adjacent premises cases. It is true, of course, that Rowland v. Christian abolished the distinction between business invitees and other classes of visitors to real property, supplanting it with a property owner’s general duty to “act[] as a reasonable [person] in view of the probability of injury to others . . . .” (Id. at p. 119.) It is a dramatic leap, however, from that proposition to the view that the
*1198substantial distinction between those who derive a commercial benefit from the plaintiff’s use of a feature of adjacent property and those who do not is simply not relevant to the question of liability.
Moreover, as Justice Kennard has noted, applying the Rowland v. Christian criteria demonstrates that liability should not attach in this case. (Dis. opn. of Kennard, J., ante, at pp. 1182-1183.) While it is “foreseeable” that one in plaintiff’s precise circumstance might be injured by stepping on the defective meter housing cover, and certain that plaintiff was injured, not one of the remaining factors outlined in Rowland supports liability in this case. Indeed, several pull strongly in the opposite direction. The lesson of this case is simple: Do no good works lest you incur liability. The homeowner who clears brush from public lands to minimize fire danger; the property owner who pays a horticulturist to prune trees in a subdivision’s common area, as well as the landlord who mows an unowned strip of ground, may now be liable to anyone injured on the premises even though their activity is completely unrelated to the cause of the injury.
These defendants did nothing villainous or even negligent. They neither created the hazard, nor made it worse, nor obtained a “commercial benefit” from the plaintiff’s “use” of it. Moreover, they had no ability to correct a problem that resulted from the city’s apparent negligence. Instead, defendants acted responsibly by mowing the city-owned strip between their property and the sidewalk rather than allowing it to become an eyesore. And once an injury occurred, they sought to prevent future problems. For their pains, the majority will teach them the truth of another old adage: “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Conclusion
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and direct the trial court to enter summary judgment for defendants.