Court Opinion

ID: 9546669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:33:48.187018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:45.038276
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I agree with that portion of the majority opinion holding that petitioners’ failure to provide adequate parking facilities justified the Board’s decision not to renew the permit.
However, while thus correctly affirming the Board’s decision, the opinion unfortunately encourages, indeed almost compels, an owner of a business for which an operating permit is necessary to hire its own private police *88force. It appears to be contemplated that this gendarmerie would keep patrons under surveillance after they leave the business premises and until they are no longer within “the immediate vicinity” of the establishment. Because the existence and activities of numerous private security forces in communities may actually exacerbate the disruptive activity which has alarmed the Board, I cannot agree with that portion of the opinion which places significant responsibility oni licensees to control the conduct of departing patrons after they have reached public streets and sidewalks.1 • I insist that the peace and security of organized society depends upon such responsibility remaining with appropriate law enforcement agencies.
That portion of the majority opinion which implies the need for private policing can be expected to have a mushrooming impact: licensing agencies will feel free to deny permit renewals on the ground that the licensee has not adequately supervised public property in the area outside of its establishment. In turn, licensees, in order to remain in business, will find it necessary to hire external roving security guards. When viewed in the factual context of this case, such guards will undoubtedly play a significant role in the handling of tumultuous disturbances involving vast numbers of people, perhaps even facilitating, or hampering, massive arrests. This will be undertaken even though private police seldom possess the skills or receive the specialized training available to regular local law enforcement personnel. The potential effect which private police operations, performing a public function on public property, might have on the constitutional safeguards protecting individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, coerced confessions and on those rights enunciated in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436 [16 L.Ed.2d 694, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 10 A.L.R.3d 974], and related high court cases, is unsettling.
The requirement that licensees control disturbances on public streets and sidewalks is not compelled by the cases cited by the majority. The language contained in People v. Lim (1941) 18 Cal.2d 872, 882 [118 P.2d 472], a case primarily concerned with the availability of civil injunctions to prevent the violation of criminal laws, does not require the conclusion that licensees must police adjacent streets. In essence, Lim says that crowds of disorderly people may (1) create traffic problems and (2) disturb the peace. The former charge is adequately covered by the *89majority’s opinion on petitioners’ parking facilities. The second element, at least as discussed in Lim, is ambiguous since it could refer to conduct occurring on or off the premises.
The majority also rely on a footnote in a Court of Appeal case, O'Hagen v. Board of Zoning Adjustment (1971) 19 Cal.App.3d 151, 163, footnote 6 [96 Cal.Rptr. 484], but this citation does not provide persuasive support. The court appeared primarily concerned with the “noise, odors and creation of traffic and attendant circumstances” (19 Cal.App.3d at pp. 164-165), citing Willson v. Edwards (1927) 82 Cal.App. 564 [256 P. 239], even though the complaint did allege other activity occurring off the premises as contributing to the nuisance. In Willson, an injunction was upheld upon the court’s understanding that if “no disturbing noise is created in the conduct of defendants’ business during the hours mentioned, nothing is restrained.” (Id., p. 571; italics added.)
People v. Robin (1943) 56 Cal.App.2d 885 [133 P.2d 436], and People v. Montoya (1933) 137 Cal.App.Supp. 784 [28 P.2d 101], involved establishments primarily engaged in serving alcoholic beverages. Even assuming an owner of a tavern has some duty to prevent its patrons from becoming an unconscious burden on the adjacent sidewalk, petitioners here were not operating a beer hall but a roller skating rink. Evidence proffered by petitioners indicated that the rink’s management did not countenance the consumption of alcohol on the premises. As the majority concede, “Sergeant Van Vleck testified that Rollerbowl’s manager informed him that if security guards ‘caught anybody with a bottle or can of beer or anything, they were to be ejected.’ ” (Ante, p. 83.)
The reliance on saloon (Robin and Montoya) and gambling (Lim) cases, none of which involved a municipal body refusing to grant a permit for failure to patrol public property, and a drive-in restaurant (O’Hagen) case, is inapposite for a fundamental reason. The owners of such places of business, which charge no admission fee, derive their economic benefit from people, attracted to the outside of the establishment, coming in to drink or eat, or to be entertained, then leaving or loitering and returning frequently to the premises for more drinks, food or companionship. In the case of a saloon, that some individuals will lose consciousness on the adjacent sidewalk can be directly related to a tavern owner’s desire to sell more drinks and by the failure of such owner to refuse to serve alcohol to an intoxicated patron.
In the case at bar, the activities on public streets and sidewalks are not so causally related. (Cf. Commonwealth v. Tick, Inc. (1967) 427 Pa. 120 [233 A.2d 866, 868].) In fact such violent conduct on the part of patrons *90and passers-by may adversely affect petitioners’ business by deterring potential customers from patronizing the rink and by causing property damage to petitioners’ buildings and fixtures. (Cf. Commonwealth v. Tick, Inc., supra, at p. 869 [of 233 A. 2d], dissenting opinion by Eagen, J.) Absent a direct causal relationship between the nature of the activities taking place inside the roller rink and those occurring outside, and absent a showing that petitioners encouraged or acquiesced in the disorderly conduct off the premises, licensee responsibility should not attach.
The general rule as enunciated by this court in Flores v. Los Angeles Turf Club (1961) 55 Cal.2d 736 [13 Cal.Rptr. 201, 361 P.2d 921] and by the appellate court in Tarbox v. Board of Supervisors (1958) 163 Cal.App.2d 373 [329 P.2d 553], remains sound: a licensee is responsible for governing only patrons’ activities which are reasonably within the scope of the licensee’s control. In Flores we said that the state had a legitimate interest in holding the licensees responsible for those “[P]ersons presently conducting themselves improperly on the premises” but that “the state may not impose on them the responsibility of. governing conditions beyond their control.” (55 Cal.2d at p. 743.) Flores and Tarbox both dealt with conduct of patrons prior to their coming onto the premises. There is no rational reason for a different rule applied to conduct subsequent to leaving the establishment unless the licensee gains direct benefit from, or acquiesces in, the disorderly conduct occurring on public property. (Cf. People v. Robin (1943) supra, 56 Cal.App.2d 885, 888.)
The distinction between allowing a licensee to hire internal security guards and requiring a licensee to employ a mini police force to restrain troublemakers on neighborhood streets is clear. On-the-premises security guards provide protection for patrons, employees and the physical plant from the mischievous conduct of fellow patrons or unwanted intruders. The guards’ role is essentially reactive, and is primarily limited to the physical confines of the building. Much of their work can be eased by a proper screening process at the box office, i.e., refusing admission to those who, for example, are intoxicated or have misbehaved while in the building on previous occasions. The presence of posted security guards serves to deter further rowdiness. The role of such personnel changes drastically when, as the majority would have them do, they are to comb the surrounding area, break up outside groups, protect adjacent property, direct traffic, and attempt to quell riotous conditions. Such functions directly invade the province reserved for appropriate law enforcement agencies.
The wisdom of the rule that, the responsibility for disorderly conduct occurring on public streets and sidewalks rests in government and not in private hands has; not been questioned since early civil nuisance *91actions. In Pfingst v. Senn (Ky. 1893) 23 S.W. 358, the court refused to enjoin the opening of defendant’s “resort and beer garden.” The complaint alleged that previously a similar establishment was operated on the same property and that “crowds of idle and disorderly spectators were drawn by the music, and their habitual presence in the streets became to the neighbors a source of annoyance and a nuisance.” (23 S.W. at p. 359.) To this contention the court responded: “[T]he idle and disorderly crowd of ‘hangers on’ may easily and summarily be disposed of on complaint to the municipal authorities.” (23 S.W. at p. 360.)
The Supreme Court of Iowa reached a similar conclusion in Mitchell v. Flynn Dairy Co. (1915) 172 Iowa 582 [151 N.W. 434], modified on other grounds, 154 N.W. 878. There the court held that noise emanating from an alley used almost exclusively by defendant constituted a nuisance but stated the following with regard to noise caused by farmers unloading milk on a public avenue for delivery to defendant’s dairy company: “Some complaint is made by plaintiffs as to the condition of the avenue created by the conduct of farmers who unhitched and fed their teams upon the avenue in front of the plaintiffs’ residences. These farmers were patrons of the defendant company in that they sold and delivered milk to it daily. We think the defendant was not chargeable with the conduct of these persons. They alone were chargeable with such misconduct. Such use of the street could be easily prevented by appropriate warning and prosecution .. . .” (151 N.W. at p. 438.)
The majority opinion in the instant case, by requiring petitioners to police the public streets and sidewalks surrounding their establishment, takes an ominous step toward resurrecting the long rejected doctrine of self-help, even though it is a wisely established principle that the “first business of the law, and more especially of the law of crime and tort, is to suppress self-help.” (3 Holdsworth, A History of English Law (5th ed. 1942, reprinted 1966) at p. 278; also see Daluiso v. Boone (1969) 71 Cal.2d 484, 495 [78 Cal.Rptr. 707, 455 P.2d 811].)
It is my opinion that the law does not require petitioners to police the streets and sidewalks in the neighborhood of their establishment, and that the Board could not deny the permit on such ground absent a showing of encouragement of or acquiescence in disorderly conduct.
Peters, J., and Sullivan, J., concurred.
Appellants’ petition for a rehearing was denied June 29, 1972. Peters, J., and Sullivan, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 While, the majority purport to avoid deciding “to what extent a licensee remains accountable for off-premises disturbances beyond his reasonable control” (ante, p. 84) the issue cannot be brushed under the rug since it was one of the two bases for the Board’s denial of the petitioners’ application. And the majority opinion approves “the Board’s findings regarding petitioners’ failure to control its patrons and prevent public disturbances” (ante, p. 85; italics added) and the refusal to renew the permit on that ground.