Retail employer California appellate strategy in premises cases usually turns on one thing: how the duty question gets framed. Defense counsel will almost always try to narrow the facts down to the specific, unusual circumstances of the injury and argue that those specific circumstances were unforeseeable. Plaintiff's counsel has to pull the analysis back up to the level of generality the law actually requires. The parking lot fire appeal handled by The Homampour Law Firm before the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, illustrates exactly how that reframing works and why it matters.
1714
Civil Code section setting the default duty of ordinary care
De novo
Standard of review that let the appellate court reweigh duty
California's default rule of duty comes from Civil Code section 1714, which provides that everyone is responsible for injury caused by a want of ordinary care in the management of their property. The California Supreme Court's decision in Rowland v. Christian established the factors that can support an exception to that general duty: foreseeability of harm, the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury, moral blame, the policy of preventing future harm, the burden on the defendant and the community, and the availability of insurance. The Supreme Court refined that framework in Cabral v. Ralphs Grocery Co. (2011) 51 Cal.4th 764, holding that courts analyzing duty must do so at a relatively broad level of factual generality. Cabral was the case the Court of Appeal identified as the Supreme Court's most recent explication of the proper duty analysis for negligent management of one's own property, and it was the anchor of the appellate argument.
In the trial court, the retailer argued it had no duty to protect the neighboring property from the unforeseeable use of illegal dangerous fireworks and subsequent fire. That framing invited the court to focus on the specific, illegal character of the fireworks used on July 4, 2006, rather than on the broader pattern of conduct that mattered under Cabral. On appeal, The Homampour Law Firm argued that the correct question, at the appropriate level of generality, was whether a landowner owes a duty of ordinary care when choosing how to control a dangerous activity known to recur on its property on a specific, predictable date. That reframing mattered enormously, because the retailer's own employees had observed fireworks in the parking lot repeatedly in the years before the fire, and the Alhambra Fire Department had documented recurring fireworks activity there almost every Independence Day since 1988.
The court held that the distinction between legal "safe and sane" fireworks and illegal fireworks, while it might bear on breach or causation at trial, was not the right lens for the threshold duty question. The broader activity, fireworks use in the lot on July 4, was clearly foreseeable to the retailer based on years of firsthand knowledge.
The same analysis produced a different result for the landowning trust and the intermediate lessee, because no evidence showed either of them knew about the fireworks activity on the portion of the property the retailer occupied. Knowledge is not automatically imputed up or down a chain of landlords and tenants.
The court rejected the retailer's attempt to import the misfeasance-versus-nonfeasance framework used in third-party criminal conduct cases, noting that none of that authority addressed the duty of a property owner to limit a dangerous activity known to recur on a specific date.
Applied at the correct level of generality, the framework produced a split result across the defendants.
The case behind this page
The full story of a summary judgment loss reversed on appeal.
Read the full case study on the parking lot fire appealRelated proof
How employee admissions and public agency records establish what a business knew.
How prior knowledge is provenRelated breakdowns from this appeal and our premises and property damage practice.
We take premises and property damage appeals as counsel or co-counsel and pay statutory referral fees.
Refer a caseCalifornia's default duty of ordinary care comes from Civil Code section 1714, and courts assess exceptions to that duty using the factors set out in Rowland v. Christian, refined by the California Supreme Court in Cabral v. Ralphs Grocery Co. to require analysis at a relatively broad level of factual generality.
Cabral required the Court of Appeal to assess the retailer's duty at a broad level of factual generality, focusing on whether fireworks use in the parking lot was foreseeable in general, rather than on the specific illegal character of the fireworks that caused the fire. That framing was central to the reversal of summary judgment against the retailer.
No. A reversal on the duty question only restores the plaintiff's right to have a jury decide whether the defendant breached that duty and whether the breach caused the harm. The Court of Appeal expressly declined to decide the breach question, leaving it open for further proceedings.
