Property Owner Not Responsible for Assault Away from Bar
Glynn v. Orange Circle Lounge, Inc., is a good reminder of the general principle and case law that property owners are generally not responsible for injuries that occur off premises. In this case, the bar’s duty to patrons did not extend to a patron who was involved in a bar fight but died fighting the same assailants in a fight an hour later, a block away.
In the late evening of July 28, 2018, and early morning of July 29, 2018, Nicholas and his friends J.D. and J.B were patrons of District Lounge in Orange, California. Around 12:15 am, a fight broke out between Nicholas and J.D. and several other patrons of the bar. The fight was broken up by security and the groups were escorted outside, and the groups went their separate ways. Security or other employees did not call the police. Nicholas and J.D. walked down the street, turned left, and went to the rear of another bar. They decided to return to another friend’s house and looped back around to Chapman Avenue, about a block from the District Lounge. They encountered the assailants from the bar fight. The assailants drove past them and threw a beer bottle and got out of the car. A fight ensued and Nicholas was stabbed to death.
Plaintiffs and Appellants Tina Glynn and David Glynn (parents of decedent Nicholas Glynn) sued the defendants, Orange Circle Lounge, Inc., Lounge Group, Inc., and Mario Marovic, owner and operators of the bar for the wrongful death of Nicholas. The defendant property owner was granted summary judgment because the assault did not occur on its property. The plaintiffs appealed and the appellate court confirmed.
In its opinion, the Court discussed the issue to be evaluated was the extent of the duty arising out of defendants’ special relationship with Nicolas as a patron of the bar; not how far the duty of ordinary care reaches. The Court reminded us of the general rule “that a person who has not created a peril is not liable in tort for failing to take affirmative action to protect another unless they have some special relationship that gives rise to a duty to act.” (Paz v. State of California (2002) 22 Cal.4th 550, 558.) Defendants fall into this exception to the rule because bar proprietors owe a duty arising out of the special relationship created between themselves and their customers. As explained in Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, 235, past cases have recognized duties to bars to provide assistance to customers who become ill or need medical attention, to warn patrons of known dangers, and to take reasonable measures to protect patrons and invitees from imminent or ‘ongoing’ criminal conduct. (Id. at 241.) The Court explained that the facts of this case fall outside the existing duties because Nicholas was not ill, not in need of medical attention at the time he left the bar, and the criminal conduct that resulted in Nicholas’s injuries and death was not imminent or ongoing at the time he left the bar. Rather, the Court determined that the undisputed evidence showed that Nicholas and the assailants left the bar separately, the fight was over and was not “ongoing.”
In order for plaintiffs to prevail, a duty arising from the bar/patron special relationship beyond those identified in past cases must be found. To evaluate this issue, the Court analyzed the factors identified in the Supreme Court case, Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 112. The factors are: “foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame attached to the defendant’s conduct, the policy of preventing future harm, the extent of the burden to the defendant and the consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.” (Id. at 113.)
In balancing the Rowland factors, the Court did not impose a duty under these facts. The first and second factors were found to be in favor of plaintiffs because the harm was foreseeable given the initial fight and the certainty of injury. However, the third factor was in favor of defendants because of the time and location, and “tenuous logic of the causal connection” of the second fight. The lack of the call to the police was not the sort of conduct that moral blame attached to and would likely not have prevented Nicholas’s death in evaluating the fourth and fifth factors. Similarly, the sixth and seventh factors weighed against finding a duty because police resources would be stretched if bars were required to call the police after every fight and the expansion of the scope of liability for a bar would increase the cost of insurance. The Court reaffirmed the approach taken in Delgado and past cases concluding that a bar’s duty arising out of its special relationship to a patron extends to protecting them from imminent or ongoing criminal conduct but not further. (Delgado, supra, 36 Cal.4th at 241.) The defendants’ special relationship to Nicholas ended when he left the bar as did the duty owed to him.
The case can be found here.
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