Court Opinion

ID: 9585179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:57:13.23621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:45.069127
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
Like the majority, I fully embrace the proposition that “the provision of improved lighting and maintenance, operational surveillance cameras and periodic walk-throughs of the tenant garage owned and operated by defendants might have diminished the *1200risk of criminal attacks occurring in the garage.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1199.) Such measures, or others that might readily be imagined, such as strategically placed intercoms or security alarms, clearly would enhance any garage user’s sense of personal safety and security when parking his or her car and traversing the facility to an exit.
Notwithstanding the above, a landlord has no absolute duty, in the abstract, to take some or all such measures; rather, a landlord’s “duty to take affirmative action to control the wrongful acts of a third party will be imposed only where such conduct can be reasonably anticipated.” (Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center (1993) 6 Cal.4th 666, 676 [25 Cal.Rptr.2d 137, 863 P.2d 207] (Ann M.), citing Frances T. v. Village Green Owners Assn. (1986) 42 Cal.3d 490, 501 [229 Cal.Rptr. 456, 723 P.2d 573, 59 A.L.R.4th 447].) As we stated in Ann M., “In this, as in other areas of tort law, foreseeability is a crucial factor in determining the existence of duty.” (6 Cal.4th at p. 676, citing Isaacs v. Huntington Memorial Hospital (1985) 38 Cal.3d 112, 123 [211 Cal.Rptr. 356, 695 P.2d 653] (Isaacs); Lopez v. McDonald’s Corp. (1987) 193 Cal.App.3d 495, 506 [238 Cal.Rptr. 436].) Foreseeability, as regards duty, rests on more than the mere possibility that taking any one or a combination of assorted measures might diminish the risk of criminal attacks. Rather, “duty in such circumstances is determined by a balancing of ‘foreseeability’ of the criminal acts against the ‘burdensomeness, vagueness, and efficacy’ of the proposed security measures.” (Ann M., supra, at p. 679, citing Gomez v. Ticor (1983) 145 Cal.App.3d 622, 631 [193 Cal.Rptr. 600].)
Consequently, I believe the majority correctly adheres to the test set forth in Ann M., when it states that, “absent any prior similar incidents or other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults in that location, we cannot conclude defendants were required to secure the area against such crime.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1199, italics added; see Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 679 & fn. 7.)
In the instant case, the record fails to show not only any prior similar incidents; it fails as well to show any “other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults” in the garage. The only criminal activity in close proximity to the garage consisted of seven robberies, over a period of two years, in a bank aboveground and at some distance from the parking garage entrance. The possibility of a robbery in a bank does not raise the possibility of a rape in a distant, or even a nearby, garage.
Significantly, before this incident the garage had been crime free for more than 10 years. The garage was frequented, moreover, not by the occasional *1201patron, but by regular customers who were tenants in the office building above. Plaintiff and her counsel assert the garage showed signs of neglect, yet, whatever the degree of neglect in its maintenance, such was insufficient, insofar as the record discloses, to cause the tenants—likely repeat, even daily, users of the facility—in the interests of their personal safety or sense of security, to complain to the owner or operator about any perceived risk of harm or deterioration in the condition of the premises. Given, therefore, the lack of any prior similar incidents, the lack of any expressed concern by regular users of the garage, and the lack of any other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults, either on the premises or in reasonable proximity thereto, I agree the landlord here did not have a legal duty to take precautions against such criminal activity.
I therefore concur in the majority’s reversal of the judgment below.
I dissent, however, from the majority opinion to the extent its exaggerated emphasis on, and separate treatment of, security guards, a measure the majority acknowledges plaintiff “is not asking for” (see maj. opn., ante, at p. 1188), may be read analytically to distinguish the question whether a landlord is obligated to provide such guards from the question of scope of duty, generally. There is no such analytical distinction. The scope of a landlord’s duty “to take reasonable steps to secure common areas against foreseeable criminal acts of third parties” (Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 674) depends on the circumstances and, as previously noted, “is determined by a balancing of ‘foreseeability’ of the criminal acts against the ‘burdensomeness, vagueness, and efficacy’ of the proposed security measures” (id. at p. 679). In Ann M., in a context where the plaintiff contended security patrols were the “first line of defense” the landlord owed (id. at p. 673), we determined a high degree of foreseeability was required to find the provision of security guards to be within the scope of the landlord’s duty. In so doing, we “revisit[edj” and “refin[edj” Isaacs, supra, 38 Cal.3d 112, which had determined that prior similar incidents were relevant, but not essential, to the existence of such a duty. We did not, however, thereby create a special form of duty analysis for such claims. Both “before and after our decision in Isaacs, we have recognized that the scope of the duty is determined in part by balancing the foreseeability of the harm against the burden of the duty to be imposed.” (Ann M., supra, at p. 678.)
I further dissent insofar as the majority opinion may be read impliedly to reinstitute a pure prior similar incidents rule such as we demonstrated in Isaacs is “fatally flawed in numerous respects.” (Isaacs, supra, 38 Cal.3d at p. 125; see generally, id. at pp. 125-126.) As the majority acknowledges, we have “left open the possibility that violent crime may be foreseeable on a *1202business property in the absence of prior similar incidents if violent crimes previously occurred on the premises of a substantially similar business establishment in its immediate proximity” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1198, citing Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 679, fn. 7) or where there are “other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults in that location” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1199). In this case, therefore, the absence of prior incidents similar to the attack on plaintiff is relevant, but not dispositive, and the majority’s conclusion “that defendants’ duty of care did not include the hiring of security guards for the garage because the bank robberies were not sufficiently similar to the sexual assault crime to establish a high degree of foreseeability” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 1195) is correct, but only because the record discloses no “other [legally sufficient] indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults in that location” (id. at p. 1199).1
Emphatically, a landlord is not, as the prior similar incidents rule would have it, entitled to one free assault before the failure to take appropriate security measures subjects him or her to the risk of civil liability.

I agree with the majority that plaintiff’s proffered proof in this case—police department records of crimes during the previous 15 months in the 50 square blocks surrounding the garage (recording 2 rapes out of 363 crimes)—does not provide a tenable basis for establishing foreseeability. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 1186, 1198.)