Riley v. Marcus

• Decision Date: 30 October 1981
• Citation: 125 Cal.App.3d 103,177 Cal.Rptr. 827
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: Sharon Lynn RILEY, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Jack MARCUS, et al., Defendants and Respondents. Civ. 61087.

Page 827

177 Cal.Rptr. 827

125 Cal.App.3d 103

Sharon Lynn RILEY, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Jack MARCUS, et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Civ. 61087.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 5, California.

Oct. 30, 1981.

Maginnis & Erwin and Russell F. Maginnis, Los Angeles, for plaintiff and appellant.

Alan R. Maler, Los Angeles, for defendants and respondents.

WOLF, ^* Associate Justice.

Plaintiff, a tenant in an apartment building in Santa Monica owned by defendants, filed the instant action against her landlord contending that defendants negligently failed to maintain the demised premises in a safe condition by failing to provide adequate lighting and adequate door locks, the absence of which resulted in the entry into plaintiff's apartment of an intruder who raped her. ¹

The trial court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment and plaintiff has appealed from the judgment which followed.

The documents which were filed in support of the motion for summary judgment consisted of the declaration of Alan R. Maler, counsel for defendants, which made reference to an excerpts from the plaintiff's deposition and her answers to interrogatories, and the declarations of defendants Eva Marcus and Jack Marcus. In opposition to the motion, plaintiff offered portions of her deposition and submitted the declaration of an expert witness, a Santa Monica police officer. This evidence established the following: The defendants' apartment house was a ten-unit, two-story building on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica. In March 1977, defendants rented a second floor apartment to plaintiff. There were incandescent hanging lights installed over each of the upstairs units which, when activated, illuminated the doors of the upstairs apartments. The lights were operated by a timer which was inaccessible to plaintiff. The timer caused the lights to turn off at approximately 1:00 or 1:30 a.m. and remain off until the nightfall of the next evening. When the lights were off, the area in the vicinity of the front door to plaintiff's apartment was extremely dark.

Plaintiff's front door was secured by two locks: a chain lock, and a lock on the doorknob which was set with a button in the center of the knob. The latter could be unlocked by rotating the inner doorknob. Adjacent to both locks were louvered windows.

In the opinion of the Santa Monica police officer, an expert in burglary investigations, the physical arrangement of the louvered windows and the door locks in a darkened area made an ideal situation for a burglar to quickly and easily gain entry into the apartment. He was of the further opinion that the locks on the doors and the exterior lights created a deceptive appearance of safety, while providing virtually no protection against forced entry, and that the absence of lights made the conditions even more hazardous from the standpoint of an unwanted intrusion.

Approximately 400 burglaries per month occurred in the City of Santa Monica. A number of these residential burglaries occurred in the area of Lincoln Boulevard where defendants' apartment building was located.

Plaintiff was unaware of the frequency of burglaries in the City of Santa Monica and had no concern about the security of the building. Plaintiff and defendants never discussed the outside lighting or the security of the building in general. Plaintiff never asked that any new locks be installed, that the louvered windows be replaced, or that bars be put on her windows. Nothing was said to plaintiff concerning the safety of the building other than that the neighborhood and building were quiet, the neighborhood was safe, and the neighbors were nice people.

On June 4, 1977, at about 4 a.m. a burglar forced his way into plaintiff's apartment by removing a louver from the window at a place adjacent to the chain and a second louver from a place adjacent to the front doorknob, unlatching the chain, turning the knob and entering the front door. Plaintiff was robbed, raped and sodomized by the assailant.

Plaintiff contends that although nothing was said to her about the safety of her apartment, she was misled into believing it was safe by the installation of door locks which appeared to be adequate but which afforded her virtually no protection. Thus, plaintiff submits, not only did defendants breach a duty to provide her with adequate security but also lulled her into a false sense of security, which renders defendants liable for the injuries she incurred.

Additionally, plaintiff maintains that even if defendants were not otherwise responsible for plaintiff's safety, they assumed that responsibility by volunteering to provide her with safety devices such as locks and lighting, and having assumed the duty, were required to perform it adequately which they failed to do.

In the recent past there have been a series of cases involving attempts to hold a landlord responsible for injuries suffered by a tenant resulting from criminal conduct which occurred on the demised premises. In Totten v. More Oakland Residential Housing, Inc., 63 Cal.App.3d 538, 134 Cal.Rptr. 29 the plaintiff-tenant, while seated in the laundry room of the defendant's apartment house, sustained injuries as a result of a shooting which occurred on the premises. A demurrer to the complaint was held to have been properly sustained on the ground that the landlord, absent prior similar incidents, is not required to anticipate the occurrence of criminal activities where the perpetrators were strangers and the incident causing the injury was sudden and unexpected.

In O'Hara v. Western Seven Trees Corp. Intercoast Management, 75 Cal.App.3d 798, 142 Cal.Rptr. 487 plaintiff-tenant sought damages from her landlord for injuries she received as a result of a rape she sustained on the defendant's premises. The plaintiff alleged that the landlord had actual knowledge of several recent rapes in the apartment complex and did not advise the plaintiff of these facts but, to the contrary, specifically represented that the building was safe and that adequate security existed. The court held that where the landlord has notice that certain crimes had occurred on...