Castaneda v. Olsher

162 P.3d 610 (2007)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D owns a mobile home park. P (who was 17 years old) lived in space 10 with his grandmother and older sister. The mobile home on space 23, across the street from P's, was occupied by Paul Levario. In the year prior to the shooting, space 23 was leased to Carmen Levario. Carmen Levario did not live there but “the son of the mobile home owner” (Paul Levario) was “hanging out there.” Paul Levario as a member of the Northside El Centro gang. P attended a party outside the mobile home park and arrived back home around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. P went inside his mobile home to let his sister know they were there, while his friends waited in the car. A few minutes later, another car, with four young men in it, pulled up behind P's car. At the same time, two young men came out of the mobile home across the street and, according to one of P's friends, Christina Sandoval, started “exchanging words and gang slurs” with the men in the second car. Sandoval recognized one of the men from the mobile home as Manuel Viloria and saw what she thought was a gun in his hand. One of the men in the second car yelled, “Westside Centro, Westside Centro,” while the men from the mobile home called out, “Northside Centro.” After a few minutes, as Sandoval and another friend started toward P's home, “shots were fired.” Plaintiff, who had reemerged from his home to his front porch area, was hit in the back. P sued Ds claiming that D had breached a duty not to rent to known gang members, to evict them when discovered, hire security guards, and maintain the lighting in the park. At trial evidence was presented that D knew of the gang problems. Two or three months before the shooting, P's grandmother, Joyce Trow, complained to D about people Trow thought looked like gang members hanging around the mobile home park and breaking the bulbs in the outdoor lights. D had said it was ok to rent to them. Joyce Trow testified that for approximately two months before the shooting she saw people dressed like gang members congregating at the mobile home across the street from hers. Her granddaughter (and P's sister), Diana Castaneda, encountered groups of four or five men, including the mobile home owner's son, dressed in baggy pants and flannel shirts, drinking from 40-ounce bottles outside the mobile home on space 23 over the month before P was shot. They whistled and hooted at her she tried to avoid attracting their attention, covering herself up and walking quickly between her car and her home. Other tenants also complained about the gang members hanging out in space 23. There were two prior gunshot incidents one by an unknown shooter from a location estimated to be outside the mobile home park. It went through an occupied mobile home but did not hit anyone. In another, shots were fired on a property contiguous to the mobile home park. A boy who lived at the park, seen trying to hide a gun after the shooting, was arrested that evening and never returned to the park. The management undertook efforts to evict his family. There had also been drug sales, and gang graffiti. At the close of evidence, D moved for nonsuit. The court held that P has failed to show prior similar incidents such that a shooting herein was highly foreseeable; therefore, under prior case law, D, the landlord, owed no duty to P. The Court of Appeal reversed and remanded for trial. D appealed.