Duty of Care

The trial court erred in granting defendant school district summary judgment.  Plaintiff, a student at the district's high school was stabbed by third person when following after school sports practice, she briefly visited a Starbucks and then returned to the high school to recover her books from her school locker.  The brief diversion to Starbucks did not interrupt the school's… Read More

Generally, a landlord does not owe a duty of care with respect to open and obvious dangers on the property.  There is an exception, however, when it is foreseeable that, because of necessity or other circumstances, a person may choose to encounter the condition.  Here, the exception applied because the obviously dangerous stairway, with uneven risers and no handrail, led… Read More

Malefactors unrelated to Uber obtained Uber stickers from its website and placed them on their cars.  Then they picked up women who thought the men were Uber drivers.  This decision holds that Uber is not liable for the fake drivers' rape of the women.  Uber didn't have a special relationship with the women that imposed any duty on it to… Read More

A school owes its students a duty of care to protect them from foreseeable harm; that is, risks that the school knows or reasonably should know to exist.  Here, the school had no prior indication that one of its teachers was having an affair with an underage student.  The risk of inappropriate sexual behavior by teachers is not so great… Read More

While an employer has an affirmative duty to provide employees with a safe place to work (Lab. Code, § 6400(a); Seabright Ins. Co. v. US Airways, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 590, 603), this decision holds that this duty does not  include ensuring that an off-site meeting place for coworkers and business associates--such as at an employee’s private residence is safe… Read More

A store owner that holds its premises open to the public owes invitees a duty of care to keep the premises reasonably safe.  A business that owns or leases only part of a larger business premises owes invitees a duty of care with regard to the entire premises, not just the part the business owns, leases or operates in.  So,… Read More

The operator of a residential care facility owed its severely retarded resident a duty of care s to take cost-effective measures to protect the resident from foreseeable harm from people like the handyman who sexually assaulted her and who the facility knew posed a foreseeable risk of harm to its female residents.) Read More

The Supreme Court holds that lenders and loan servicers do not owe borrowers a duty of care in handling their loan modification applications.  Lender and borrower are in privity of contract, and the economic loss rule prevents recovery for purely economic loss based on negligence between contracting parties.  The Biakanja factors apply only to parties not in privity of contract. … Read More

A school does not owe a student a duty to indemnify the student for attorney fees the student incurred in defending a suit by a football referee who claimed he was injured during a school-sponsored football game by plaintiff's post-play tackle of an opposing player who fell on the referee.  Neither the free school provision of the California Constitution nor… Read More

Torts, Medical Malpractice, Abandonment of Patient, Reliance on Other's Good Conduct, 1, 1 The trial court did not err in this medical malpractice case in not giving CACI 509, dealing with a doctor's abandonment of the patient.  For the instruction to be applicable, the doctor must accept the patient into his care and then refuse to treat the patient without… Read More