## Facts

- Owners of a 60-space mobile-home park leased a space to an owner whose adult son, identified as a gang member, frequently used the home.
- A 17-year-old resident was outside his home when a gang confrontation occurred nearby in the park.
- Third parties fired shots during the confrontation, injuring the resident, who was a bystander.
- The injured resident alleged the park owners knew or should have known of gang activity and harassment connected to the nearby unit and failed to (1) refuse to rent to gang members, (2) evict the implicated occupants, and (3) improve security (e.g., lighting, guards).
- The park owners had no direct involvement in the shooting.

## Issues

1. Whether a landlord generally owes a duty to reject prospective tenants the landlord believes or has reason to believe are gang members to protect other tenants from future criminal violence.
2. Whether, on these facts, the landlord owed a duty to initiate eviction proceedings against tenants with alleged gang ties based on foreseeability of violent harm.
3. Whether the landlord owed a duty to implement additional security measures (such as guards or increased lighting) in light of alleged criminal activity.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and reinstated the trial court’s nonsuit for the landlord defendants.
- The court held landlords ordinarily have no duty to reject applicants based on suspected gang membership.
- The court held no duty to pursue eviction arose on this record because the information known to the landlords did not make a violent gang confrontation and shooting highly foreseeable.
- The court’s analysis also rejected imposing costly security obligations absent a high degree of foreseeability of serious violent crime.

## Legal Principles

- Duty is evaluated under California’s negligence framework considering foreseeability, closeness of connection, moral blame, prevention policy, burden and community consequences, and insurance availability.
- For burdensome protective measures (including eviction or security guards), the required level of foreseeability is high; generalized risk of crime is insufficient.
- Landlords are not generally required to make quasi-criminal judgments about gang status at the tenant-screening stage; imposing such a duty risks arbitrary or discriminatory tenant selection and creates conflicting liability pressures.
- A landlord may have a duty to act to remove a tenant in limited circumstances where the tenant’s conduct and known criminal associations create a sufficiently high, specific, and foreseeable risk of violent harm, but that threshold was not met here.

## Conclusion

The court held the landlords were not liable for a bystander’s injuries from third-party gang violence because landlords generally have no duty to exclude suspected gang members and, absent a highly foreseeable risk of serious violence, have no duty to evict or to implement costly security measures.


Castaneda v. Olsher, 162 P.3d 610 (Cal. 2007)