## Facts

- Yu Fang Tan lived in a large apartment complex with gated interior residential areas and an ungated front area containing visitor/leasing-office parking lots and a guard shack.
- Tan parked in the ungated front lot and, as he exited his vehicle, a stranger attempted to carjack him, shot him, and left him quadriplegic.
- Tan and his family sued the property manager and owners, alleging defendants knew or should have known of three prior violent attacks by strangers in the complex’s common areas within roughly two years before Tan’s shooting.
- Plaintiffs claimed defendants failed to take relatively minimal safety steps focused on the ungated front area (e.g., closing the visitor lots at night and/or increasing security presence).

## Issues

1. Whether three prior violent attacks by strangers in the apartment complex’s common areas were sufficiently similar to Tan’s carjacking and shooting to make the harm reasonably foreseeable.
2. Whether that foreseeability could support a duty to implement the relatively minimal security measures plaintiffs proposed for the ungated common area.
3. Whether the trial court erred by treating foreseeability/duty as resolved as a matter of law and entering judgment for defendants after excluding the prior-incident evidence.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment for defendants and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the three prior violent stranger attacks in common areas were sufficiently similar in type of harm and location to supply substantial evidence of foreseeability for the limited precautions requested.
- The trial court applied an overly strict similarity requirement by effectively demanding prior carjackings or shootings before recognizing any duty.
- On this record, a reasonable factfinder could find foreseeability and duty as to minimal measures; the issue should not have been resolved categorically against plaintiffs.

## Legal Principles

- Landlords and property managers owe a duty of reasonable care in areas they control to protect tenants and invitees from foreseeable third-party criminal acts.
- Foreseeability is evaluated on a continuum tied to the burden of the specific precaution: more burdensome measures require a higher degree of foreseeability; relatively minimal measures require less.
- Prior incidents need not be identical to the later crime; sufficiently similar violent attacks in common areas can support foreseeability, particularly when modest precautions are sought.
- A court errs by demanding too precise a factual match between prior and later crimes and removing a supported foreseeability question from the factfinder.

## Conclusion

Because plaintiffs presented evidence of three recent violent stranger attacks in the complex’s common areas, the later shooting in the ungated common area could be found reasonably foreseeable for purposes of requiring consideration of limited, low-burden security measures; the defense judgment was therefore reversed and the case returned for further proceedings.


Yu Fang Tan v. Arnel Mgmt. Co., 170 Cal. App. 4th 1087 (Cal. Ct. App. 2009)