Low, Ball & Lynch's

WEEKLY LAW RESUME

October 16, 2003 Issue By: Raymond Coates

Duty of Care - Criminal Assault

Benjamin Kadish v. Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles Court of Appeal, Second District (October 10, 2003)

Recent court decisions have severely limited the ability of victims of criminal assaults to sue others for the failure to provide security. This case examines the duty of an organization to provide security where there are vague threats of violence against the organization and its members.

Eleanor and Charles Kadish enrolled their sons in a summer camp run by the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles. In the summer of 1999, there were attacks at synagogues and Jewish community centers throughout the United States, and the Anti-Defamation League sent notices to Jewish groups throughout the nation advising them to increase security. In addition, threats were made against individual facilities. On August 10, 1999, Buford Furrow, an individual with anti-Semitic views, went to the community center where the Kadish children were located and entered it and shot one of the Kadish children.

The Kadishes filed an action against the Jewish Community Center (JCC) alleging lack of security allowed the shooting. The JCC demurred to the complaint. The trial court eventually sustained a demurrer to the complaint without leave to amend and dismissed the case. The Kadishes appealed.

The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court ruling. The Court relied on the California Supreme Court case of Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center

(1993) 6 Cal.4th 666. This Supreme Court decision held that a high degree of foreseeability is required in order to find that a property owner has a duty of care to hire security guards. That degree of foreseeability rarely, if ever, can be proven in the absence of prior similar incidents of violent crime on the landowner's premises.

In this case, there were no prior incidents at the center that made the shooting foreseeable. The question was therefore whether the threats of criminal activity made the acts foreseeable and required additional security measures. The Court concluded that the vague threats made in this case were not sufficiently specific to require security measures to be adopted to prevent a maniac from shooting children at a summer camp. It was an anonymous threat that did not provide the organization with any guidance as to what precautions to take. Further, the nature of the threat was not known. The attack at this center was a surprise.

The Court further noted that it was speculative as to whether any security precautions would have prevented this shooting. The site of the camp was expansive, and it was unknown what type of security measures would have prevented the shooting. Furthermore, JCC bore no moral blame for the shooting. This was the act of a deranged gunman. Imposing a duty in this case would not guarantee there would be no future harm. Despite the best efforts of any organization, no one can prevent the acts of a crazed bigot. Finally, the Court noted placing a burden on JCC to have prevented the shooting would place an onerous burden on them. The Court therefore concluded the shooting was not reasonably foreseeable. It was an unexpected crime. The Court therefore sustained the dismissal of the complaint by the trial court. The order of dismissal was affirmed.

COMMENT

This opinion continues a trend of California cases to refuse to hold landowners and organizations responsible for the criminal acts of others in the absence of a high degree of foreseeability that such attacks might occur. This is a common sense approach that reiterates that businesses are not the insurers of the safety of people on their property who are injured by random acts of violence committed by criminals. ____ To order a printed version of this analysis, or change your subscription information, reply to this transmission. Information regarding this and other WEEKLY LAW RESUME TM articles is available from Raymond Coates at

(650) 685-7160, RCoate[email protected] or at WWW.LOWBALL.COM. The WEEKLY LAW RESUME TM is published fifty-two times a year, and is a complimentary publication of LOW, BALL & LYNCH, Attorneys at Law, a Professional Corporation, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City and Monterey, California.

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