Court Opinion

ID: 9727631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:45:46.908682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:41.060247
License: Public Domain

POCHÉ, J.
I respectfully dissent. Until now I had understood the role of this court when faced with higher authority to be that of saluting and following orders. (Auto Equity Sales, Inc. v. Superior Court (1962) 57 Cal.2d 450, 455 [20 Cal.Rptr. 321, 369 P.2d 937].) The majority opinion, instead, concludes that Becker v. IRM Corp. (1985) 38 Cal.3d 454 [213 Cal.Rptr. 213, 698 P.2d 116, 48 A.L.R.4th 601], represents merely a “minority view,” disagrees with it and purports to limit it to its facts in order to avoid its holding. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1541, fn. 2.)
Plaintiff, a woman in her late 80’s, fell while descending a dimly lit stairway in a rental unit owned by defendant who had taken an active role in the design and construction of the stairs. The stairs had a handrail running along the left wall, down the first flight, across the first landing, down the second flight, but stopping at the second landing. From the second landing there was a last step down to ground level. As plaintiff descended the stairs she held onto the handrail. When the handrail ended at the *1544second landing she assumed there were no more steps. There were: as she turned to her right to enter the hallway she stepped into mid-air, falling and breaking her hip. The handrail had ended, the stairs had not.
In reliance upon Becker v. IRM Corp., plaintiff amended her complaint to state a cause of action for strict liability on the theory that the stairway was defectively designed. She alleged that the design defect consisted, first, of the handrail which was shorter than the full flight of stairs and placed on the wrong wall; second, of dim lighting in the stairway; third, of a lack of contrast between the brown carpeting on the stairs and the brown tile flooring in the hallway at their base. In sum, the defect here was not a manufacturing flaw in the handrail itself, but a defect in the railing’s suitability for a stairway of this configuration, lighting and decor. (See Barker v. Lull Engineering Co. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 413, 428-432 [143 Cal.Rptr. 225, 573 P.2d 443, 96 A.L.R.3d 1].)
The majority opinion holds that strict liability has no application here. It does so despite the holding in Becker v. IRM Corp., supra, 38 Cal.3d 454, 464, that the owner of a 36-unit apartment complex was strictly liable in tort for injuries resulting from a latent defect existing at the time the premises were let to the injured tenant. The majority concludes that “Becker must be limited to its facts; that strict tort liability thereunder may not be extended to instances where the lease of a house involves only an isolated act. In such a situation there is no entrepreneurial undertaking and the imposition of entrepreneurial liability would be manifestly unjustified.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1541, fn. omitted.)
Not even the dissenters in Becker believed that the decision could be so limited. Indeed, then Justice Lucas noted that under the majority’s holding “those who decide to rent out the family home on a regular basis are also now strictly liable for defects in any item located therein. Under the majority’s formulation, where the relevant relationship is that of landlord to his property and tenants, any landlord is now strictly liable for defects of which he or she has no knowledge or reason to know and which appear in any part of the property no matter how esoteric the understanding necessary to comprehend the working of that part. Nothing in the majority’s approach is necessarily confined to landlords of multiple residences.” (38 Cal.3d at pp. 483-484, fn. omitted.)
When even the dissenting members of our Supreme Court conclude that a decision of that court cannot be limited to its facts, where does a lower court derive its authority to ignore the Supreme Court’s holding, straight-arm the rationale of the decision, and limit the decision to its facts?
*1545Even if I could accept the appropriateness of the majority’s approach, the opinion must make major factual assumptions in order to justify its result. As an initial matter the majority opinion concludes, without discussion, that the design defect was patent. (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1540.) Neither in the record below nor in their briefs to this court have the parties contended that the design defect was patent, which is defined as open, exposed, evident to public inspection, open to view, readily visible or intelligible. (Baker v. Walker & Walker Inc. (1982) 133 Cal.App.3d 746, 762 [184 Cal.Rptr. 245].) Whether an architectural design defect is patent or latent is to be determined by looking at the totality of the circumstances in order to conclude whether the defect should have been cognizable to the user. (Mattingly v. Anthony Industries, Inc. (1980) 109 Cal.App.3d 506, 511 [167 Cal.Rptr. 292]; Barnes v. Innis-Tennebaum Architects, Inc. (1990) 221 Cal.App.3d 1314 [271 Cal.Rptr. 92].)
Since the contention here is that the design defect consisted not simply in a handrail that stopped before the end of the stairs, but in the overall design of the stairs, I cannot say as a matter of law in a case where the issue was excluded at the outset of trial that the defect, if any, for the issue is a question of fact (Sandoval v. Superior Court (1983) 140 Cal.App.3d 932, 944 [190 Cal.Rptr. 29]), was patent.
The question of whether strict liability could also be imposed for patent or for disclosed defects was expressly left open in Becker. (Becker v. IRM Corp., supra, 38 Cal.3d at p. 464, fn. 4.) However, that opinion implies by an explicit reference to Luque v. McLean (1972) 8 Cal.3d 136, 141-146 [104 Cal.Rptr. 443, 501 P.2d 1163], that a patent defect would not defeat liability, but would merely be a defense relevant to the apportionment of damages under principles of comparative fault. (Daly v. General Motors Corp. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 725, 742 [144 Cal.Rptr. 380, 575 P.2d 1162]; Safeway Stores, Inc. v. Nest-Kart (1978) 21 Cal.3d 322, 332 [146 Cal.Rptr. 550, 579 P.2d 441].)
Seizing upon its own factual finding that the defect was patent, the majority opinion then asserts without citation to authority that knowledge of the defect is “imputable to appellant, their houseguest.” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1540.) The only authority I can find in support of this contention is Hanson v. Luft (1962) 58 Cal.2d 443, 445 [24 Cal.Rptr. 681, 374 P.2d 641]. That case predates the modern analysis for questions of possessor of land liability as developed in Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 119 [70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496], and in Becker v. IRM Corp., supra, 38 Cal.3d at page 465. Thus, I question its current validity.
*1546Even if I were to assume, however, that the defect was patent and that knowledge of it could be imputed to plaintiff as a guest of the tenants, plaintiff’s recovery would only be precluded if her own negligence in the face of that patent defect was such as to become a superseding cause of her injury. (Edwards v. California Sports, Inc. (1988) 206 Cal.App.3d 1284, 1288-1289 [254 Cal.Rptr. 170]; Paverud v. Niagara Machine & Tool Works (1987) 189 Cal.App.3d 858, 861-862 [234 Cal.Rptr. 585].) The existence of a superseding cause is a question of fact. (Balido v. Improved Machinery, Inc. (1972) 29 Cal.App.3d 633, 645 [105 Cal.Rptr. 890].)
Just as the majority opinion decides without evidence that the defect here was patent, it also decides that Tanzman “who leased his own family residence to the tenants on a temporary basis” was therefore not “ ‘engaged in the business of distributing goods to the public’ as ‘an integral part of the overall producing and marketing enterprise.’ ” (Maj. opn., ante, p. 1540.) At the time of trial Tanzman had not been living in the house for two years and was only predicting his return to it “within the next couple years.” The opinion uses its factual finding to conclude that the rationale for imposing strict liability upon a landlord does not exist here.
Admittedly, it can be argued that there are policy reasons the Supreme Court could have used to limit its holding in Becker to landlords of large rental complexes or those whose holdings consisted of multiple units. Quite aside from the fact that the Becker opinion did not so limit its holding, the rationale for strict liability enunciated in Becker applies here with even greater force than to the fact pattern in that case. In Becker the owner of the complex had purchased the building some nine years after its completion. (Becker v. IRM Corp., supra, 38 Cal.3d at pp. 457-458.) Using standard strict liability analysis the Supreme Court concluded that the apartment owner there was, in effect, a retailer in the business of leasing apartments who was thus in the marketing enterprise by which the defective product (a shower door) reached the user public. (Id. at p. 476.)
Mr. Tanzman is a much less remote link in the commercial chain. Unlike the owner in Becker, Tanzman built the stairway in question and thus stands more nearly in the position of a manufacturer of a defective product—the stairway. One of the issues which troubled the dissenters in Becker was application of strict liability to subsequent owners rather than to builders of the property. (Becker v. IRM Corp., supra, 38 Cal.3d at p. 483.) I can only conclude that the rationale of Becker's imposition of strict liability upon the owner of a “used” building applies with redoubled force to Tanzman as the builder of the allegedly defective stairs.
*1547For these reasons I would reverse the judgment on the ground that plaintiff was denied instructions on strict liability to which she was entitled.
A petition for a rehearing was denied September 19, 1990, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied November 20, 1990. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.