Ruling in Assault Favors Landlords

Victims of attacks in crime-ridden buildings cannot collect monetary damages from owners unless there is clear evidence that a lack of security was directly responsible for the crime, a divided California Supreme Court decided Thursday.

On a 4-3 vote, the court said a female FedEx employee who was attacked while delivering a package to a Bellflower apartment complex failed to prove that security guards and other preventive measures would have forestalled the assault. The court said such evidence was missing because the assailants were never caught and questioned.

The decision is a victory for the owners of a wide variety of properties including gas stations, shopping centers, universities and fast-food outlets.

The justices who dissented complained that the ruling was so protective of landlords that it would virtually close the door to similar lawsuits in the future. Such suits have tended to be brought by tenants in unsafe buildings and their visitors. Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, one of the justices in the minority, noted that the victim lost her case in large part because her attackers were never found.

“That she should be barred from the courthouse for this very reason, is both cruelly ironic and legally unjustified,” Werdegar said.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George joined the conservative wing of the court to form a majority, while Werdegar, who, like George, is a moderate Republican, sided with the court’s liberals.

The majority on the court said the victim, Marianne Saelzler, was unable to prove that the assault would not have occurred if security measures at the complex were better.

No matter how “inexcusable” a property owner’s failure to provide security might be, the victim “must nonetheless show the act or omission caused, or substantially contributed to, her injury,” Justice Ming W. Chin wrote for the court.

In previous cases, the high court generally has agreed with landlords. The court refused in a 6-1 decision in 1999 to hold a garage owner liable for a rape because the court said the crime could not have been foreseen. No previous assaults had occurred in the garage. By contrast, there was plenty of evidence of prior crime at the Bellflower complex.

Werdegar, who was in the majority in the 1999 decision, said the court went overboard Thursday, and she accused the majority of straining “to insulate even the most careless from their minimal responsibilities.”

Saelzler was attacked in the afternoon of March 15, 1996, at the Sherwood Apartments, a 300-unit apartment complex located on several acres in Bellflower.

On her way out of the complex, three men confronted her. “Where do you think you’re going?” one said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The three men beat her and tried to tear off her shorts to rape her but fled when other women approached and shouted at them. The attackers were never caught.

Manager Used Security Guards

Evidence showed a long history of criminal incidents at the complex, managed by Advanced Group 400. In the year prior to the assault, there were 41 reports of trespassing and 45 reports of gates and fences being broken, according to police and security logs.

Criminal activity in the complex included gunshots, robberies and sexual assaults, including rapes.

The apartment manager was so fearful that she used security guards to escort her to her car whenever she left the premises. Some pizza parlors refused to deliver to the apartments.

The owners did take some steps prior to the attack on Saelzler to improve security. The high court said they hired security guards to patrol at night and made frequent attempts to repair broken locks and gates.

Logs showed that the building manager evicted tenants involved in criminal or gang activity and forced trespassers to leave the area.

Police had advised both the building manager and the security firm used by the buildings’ owners to employ guards in the day as well as at night. The owners, however, did not follow the recommendation.

Despite this failure, the majority on the court reasoned that making landlords liable for inadequate daytime security would raise their costs, which ultimately would be “passed on to the tenants of low-cost housing in the form of increased rents, adding to the financial burden on poor renters.”

The majority insisted that the ruling will not foreclose all similar lawsuits. Some may still succeed if there is ample evidence that the assailants took advantage of lapsed security to commit the attack, the majority said.

“Eyewitnesses, security cameras, even fingerprints or recent signs of break-in or unauthorized entry, may show what likely transpired at the scene,” Chin wrote. “In the present case, no such evidence was presented, but the circumstances in other cases may well be different.”

Justice Joyce L. Kennard accused the majority of placing “a virtually insurmountable barrier in the path” of any victim seeking to recover damages for injuries resulting from a landlord’s negligent failure to provide security against foreseeable threats.

She complained that the majority has forced victims to show “with certainty” that the lack of security caused the attack. That contradicts long-established law, she said.

Werdegar, who signed Kennard’s opinion, also wrote separately in Saelzler vs. Advanced Group 400, SO85736. She said it should be up to a jury to decide whether the lack of security caused the attack.

“Defendants failed to provide any regular daytime security personnel--except, significantly, for their own manager,” wrote Werdegar, who was joined by Kennard and Justice Stanley Mosk.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge had ruled for the property owners before the case went to a jury, but a 2nd District Court of Appeal panel decided 2-to-1 for the victim. Thursday’s action overturns that ruling.

Jamie Cutler, the current property manager for Sherwood Apartments, said the complex has improved dramatically since the 1996 attack. She said the grounds are regularly patrolled from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. and “on and off” the rest of the time. Cutler has been the manager for about four months but doesn’t live in the complex. She declined to give the names of the owners.

“I guess it used to be pretty bad and rugged,” Cutler said. “Especially over the past year or so, they have evicted tons of people. . . . It has really cleaned up a lot.”

Groups Support Court’s Ruling

Daniel B. Wolfberg, who represented Saelzler in the case, called the decision “bad news for tenants in poor housing conditions and for visitors to places where there is a lot of criminal activity.”

He said most of the plaintiffs in such cases are women. “I don’t think there is a case out there that has a man being a victim,” he said.

Several groups supported the buildings’ owners position, including corporate defense lawyers, insurance firms, universities, insurers, and building owners and managers.

Frederic D. Cohen, who represented a consortium of universities, colleges and insurance companies, said the ruling will not deter property owners from striving to make sure their properties are secure.

He said it was needed because juries are likely to blame the property owner for crimes, even if good security is in place.

“The mere fact that a crime occurred could suggest that more should have been done to provide even greater security,” Cohen said.

The attorney for the property owners was not available for comment.