Negligent Security Claims in California

California's Legal Framework for Negligent Security

California's starting point is a single sentence of statute. Civil Code section 1714(a) provides: "Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person, except so far as the latter has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself."

That duty to manage property with ordinary care is the root of premises liability, which is the law holding owners and occupiers responsible for unsafe conditions on property they control. Negligent security is one branch of it. The harm comes from a third person's crime, and the question is whether the property's management made that crime easier. For a fuller national picture, see how a negligent security lawyer explains these cases.

The hardest issue is usually foreseeability, meaning whether the property's controller could reasonably have anticipated the kind of crime that happened. In Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center, 6 Cal. 4th 666 (1993), the Supreme Court of California held that a high degree of foreseeability is required before a landlord's duty includes hiring security guards. The court said that showing rarely, if ever, can be made without prior similar incidents of violent crime on the premises.

For an injured person, this means the first fight is often over whether any duty to provide that security existed at all. If you were hurt on a property with a history of similar violent crime, that history may carry real weight; if there was none, the question becomes harder. A conversation with an attorney can cover how the foreseeability question fits the particular property and what happened there.

Where These Incidents Arise in California

Claims like these come out of the ordinary places people live, shop and travel, including apartment complexes and other rental housing, shopping centers, parking structures, hotels, bars and nightclubs, and transit facilities.

Rental housing has a specific statute. Under Civil Code section 1941.3, on and after July 1, 1998, the landlord or the landlord's agent of a building intended for human habitation must meet a list of duties. One of those duties is to install and maintain an operable dead bolt lock on each main swinging entry door of a dwelling unit. The lock must be installed to the manufacturer's specifications and comply with applicable state and local codes. When locked, the bolt must extend at least 13/16 of an inch beyond the strike edge and into the doorjamb. If you are a tenant attacked after someone came through a door without a working dead bolt, this statute may bear on the claim, though whether a lock problem connects to an attack depends on the facts. The topic of apartment complex negligent security is covered in more depth elsewhere on this site.

Commercial settings raise the same Ann M. question in different ways. The nature of the business and the property's own history of prior similar violent incidents bear directly on how foreseeable a crime was. The more costly the security measure at issue, the more Ann M. demands. Someone hurt in a hotel lot and someone hurt in an apartment corridor face the same standard, but the record that matters will look different, and identifying the right type of property is often the first step in knowing which rules come into play.

Who May Be Responsible for an Attack on Someone Else's Property

Responsibility in California follows control of the property. For someone who was hurt, that means the party responsible may not be the one whose name is on the building. Depending on who ran the space, it may be the owner, a landlord, a commercial tenant who runs the business where the attack happened, or a property management company that handles day-to-day operations. More than one may share responsibility, depending on who controlled the area and the security decisions.

If the Property Was Government-Owned, the Claim Deadline Is Six Months

Publicly owned property follows a different track. Under Government Code section 945.4, with exceptions in sections 946.4 and 946.6, no suit for money or damages may be brought against a public entity on a cause of action that requires a claim until a written claim has been presented to the entity. The claim must also have been acted upon by the board, or deemed rejected by the board.

That claim has its own clock. Government Code section 911.2(a) requires a claim relating to a cause of action for death or for injury to person to be presented not later than six months after the cause of action accrues. That is separate from, and shorter than, the general two-year period discussed below.

Government Code section 945.6(a) then sets the time to sue, subject to its stated exceptions. If written notice is given under section 913, suit must be filed no later than six months after that notice is personally delivered or mailed. If no such notice is given, suit must be filed within two years from accrual. Knowing early whether a public body owned or ran the property can change everything that follows.

Filing Deadlines for Injured Adults and Children

A statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a lawsuit. California's general rule for these cases is Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, which states: "Within two years: An action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another." Where a public entity is involved, the six-month claim requirement under Government Code section 911.2(a), described above, comes first.

Children get different timing in some cases. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 352(a), if a person entitled to sue was under the age of majority, or lacked the legal capacity to make decisions, when the cause of action accrued, the time of that disability is not counted toward the limitation period. Section 352(b) states that this rule does not apply to an action against a public entity or public employee on a cause of action for which a claim must be presented. A parent whose child was hurt on public property therefore faces the claim rules without that pause.

Deadlines like these can end a case before it starts, and the period that applies depends on who the defendant is and when the cause of action accrued. If you are unsure which clock governs, a case evaluation is one way to talk the timeline through with our attorney.

How California Allocates Fault — and What That Means for a Claim

Many injured people worry that something they did, such as walking to their car alone or arguing with someone, ends any claim. California does not use an all-or-nothing rule. In Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, the Supreme Court of California replaced the rule of contributory negligence with a system of pure comparative negligence. That system assigns liability in direct proportion to the amount of negligence of each of the parties. A person's own share of fault is weighed alongside everyone else's rather than automatically barring the claim.

A second rule applies when there are several defendants. Civil Code section 1431.2(a) provides that in a personal injury or wrongful death action based on comparative fault, each defendant's liability for non-economic damages "shall be several only and shall not be joint." Each defendant is liable only for the non-economic damages allocated to it in direct proportion to its percentage of fault, with a separate judgment against it. Non-economic damages generally mean losses like pain and suffering, as opposed to bills and lost earnings.

In a case with an owner, a manager and a security contractor, how fault is divided among them can shape what each may owe for those damages.

What Evidence Tends to Matter in These Cases

Because Ann M. ties the duty to prior similar incidents, the property's history often carries the most weight. Records that bear on that history can include police reports for the address, the property's own incident logs and complaints, and crime information for the surrounding area.

The security that existed, or did not, is the second focus. That can mean lighting, locks and gates, camera systems and their footage, guard schedules and logs, and access-control records. In rental housing, maintenance records and repair requests can matter where a dead bolt under Civil Code section 1941.3 is at issue.

The injury itself has to be documented too. If you were hurt, the records that usually matter include medical and hospital records, photos and video of the scene and of injuries, incident and police reports, and the names of people who saw what happened. Families after a death often hold some of these records already, and others sit with the property, its managers or law enforcement.

These pieces together speak to the four questions a negligence claim asks: a duty, its breach, causation and damages. For an injured person, much of what decides those questions may sit in someone else's files. A conversation can cover which records exist and who holds them.

When a Family Member Was Killed: Who May Bring a Wrongful Death Claim

Wrongful death is a claim brought by certain survivors when a person dies because of someone else's wrongful act or neglect. If you lost a spouse, domestic partner or parent, Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60(a) lists you among those who may bring the claim. The decedent's surviving spouse, domestic partner, children and issue of deceased children may assert it, or the decedent's personal representative may do so on their behalf. If the person who died left no surviving issue, the claim passes to those, including the surviving spouse or domestic partner, who would be entitled to the decedent's property by intestate succession, meaning inheritance without a will. The statute lists further persons beyond this subdivision.

The two-year period in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 expressly covers an action for the death of an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. If the property was publicly owned, the claim requirements of Government Code sections 945.4 and 911.2(a) apply to a death claim as well, so a family may be working against the shorter clock.

A family grieving a sudden loss may still need to work out who among them has standing, which means the legal right to bring the claim. That question turns on the family's actual relationships and on the statute's order, and a conversation with an attorney can help sort it out.

If the Attack Happened on Recreational Land

One California statute narrows the duty owed on land used for recreation. Civil Code section 846(a) provides that an owner of any estate or other interest in real property "owes no duty of care to keep the premises safe for entry or use by others for any recreational purpose or to give any warning of hazardous conditions, uses of, structures, or activities on those premises to persons entering for a recreational purpose, except as provided in this section."

That limit is not absolute. If you were hurt on recreational land, a claim may still be possible where an exception applies. Section 846(d) keeps liability that otherwise exists in several situations, including a "willful or malicious failure to guard or warn against a dangerous condition, use, structure or activity."

The rule concerns entry or use for a recreational purpose. It does not fit an attack in an apartment building, a store or a hotel. Whether it applies to an attack on open land depends on the facts of how and why the person entered, which is one of the questions a conversation can help work through.