Court Opinion

ID: 9748971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:19:13.67671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:41.166020
License: Public Domain

POCHÉ, J.
Dissenting. Torts 101B (second semester). Objective exam. Plaintiff’s complaint for negligence against San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) alleges that plaintiff, a paying passenger, was ordered off a BART train at the Richmond station. At that time plaintiff was inebriated to the point of incapacity and BART was fully aware of this. Plaintiff was injured at the station because BART “negligently moved the train and otherwise failed to protect [him].” BART files a general demurrer.
The demurrer should be: (a) sustained without leave to amend because as a matter of law once plaintiff alighted from the BART train he was no longer a passenger and BART owed him no further duty; or, (b) overruled.
*1025According to the majority you flunked the course if you picked (b). I would vote to flunk you if you picked (a) and therefore I respectfully dissent.
A common carrier, of course, owes its passengers the highest degree of care. That duty does not end mechanically when the passenger alights safely from the carrier’s vehicle. Instead, it ends “ ‘when the passenger is discharged into a relatively safe space . . . .’” (Riggins v. Pacific Greyhound Lines (1962) 203 Cal.App.2d 125, 128 [21 Cal.Rptr. 336].) In particular our Supreme Court has explained that the rule of utmost care and diligence applies “‘until the passenger reaches a place outside the sphere of any activity of the carrier which might reasonably constitute a mobile or animated hazard to the passenger.’ ” (Brandelius v. City & County of S.F. (1957) 47 Cal.2d 729, 735 [306 P.2d 432].)
In applying that test this district has held that “[t]he moving vehicles and the jet and propeller air blasts of an airline’s landing area rather clearly present a ‘mobile or animated hazard’ to an arriving or departing passenger” and that the highest degree of care applies “when the passenger enters and until he leaves that locality.” (Marshall v. United Airlines (1973) 35 Cal.App.3d 84, 87 [110 Cal.Rptr. 416].) Does it strain the imagination to hold that the Richmond BART station, with its incoming and departing trains, its electrified third rail, and its pits in which the trains are located, was an area within the sphere of an activity of BART which might reasonably constitute a mobile or animated hazard to a passenger so drunk that he was pouring the contents of his vodka bottle on his trousers? Is there any doubt that BART, which had full knowledge of the passenger’s condition, had the duty of utmost care to that passenger?
In my view the plaintiff stated a cause of action for negligence against BART. I would reverse the judgment of dismissal with directions to overrule the demurrer.
Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied November 12, 1997. Werdegar, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.