Negligent Security in California: When a Property Owner Is Liable for an Assault

You were attacked in the parking structure where you park every day, in the courtyard of your apartment complex, or outside a bar at closing time. The person who did it ran, and even if police find him, he has no money and no insurance. The property, meanwhile, is owned by a company that stopped replacing the burned out lights months ago and let the gate stay broken all year.

That gap is what a negligent security case addresses. It is not a claim that the property owner attacked you. It is a claim that the owner knew this could happen where it happened and chose not to do the reasonable things that would have prevented it, and California measures that duty in a very specific way that most people, and most law firms, get wrong.

Quick answer: Civil Code section 1714(a) requires property owners to use ordinary care in managing their property, which can include taking reasonable measures to protect people from foreseeable criminal acts by third parties. California applies a sliding scale: under Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center (1993) 6 Cal.4th 666, the more burdensome and expensive the security measure you say was required, the higher the showing of foreseeability you must make, and hiring security guards generally requires evidence of prior similar incidents. Under Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, a minimally burdensome response to a threat unfolding in front of staff does not require that heightened showing.

The Sliding Scale, Measure by Measure

Everything runs through the table below. The question is never simply whether the property was unsafe. It is what specific measure you say was missing, and what California requires you to prove before an owner is liable for not providing it.

• Working locks, gates, and exterior lighting; trimmed landscaping; repaired fencing. Burden on the owner: Low, and usually already part of ordinary maintenance. Showing California generally requires: Ordinary foreseeability. The general risk of crime in the setting, plus the owner's knowledge that the safeguard was broken.
• Staff calling 911 or warning a patron about a threat happening in front of them. Burden on the owner: Minimal, immediate, and free. Showing California generally requires: Ordinary foreseeability under Delgado. Prior similar incidents are not required when the danger is unfolding in view of employees.
• Surveillance cameras, access control, an intercom or key fob system. Burden on the owner: Moderate, with installation and upkeep costs. Showing California generally requires: Between the two. Stronger where the owner advertised the feature, installed it and let it fail, or knew of a pattern of incidents.
• Hiring security guards, roving patrols, or a staffed post. Burden on the owner: High and ongoing. Showing California generally requires: Heightened foreseeability under Ann M., which generally means prior similar violent incidents on or near the property.

Why the Scale Exists

California courts weigh the burden of a proposed precaution against how foreseeable the harm was. Requiring a landlord to replace a burned out bulb over a stairwell is cheap and obvious. Requiring the same landlord to staff an armed guard around the clock is a permanent expense that changes what the property is.

So the law demands proportionally more proof for the more expensive measure. In Ann M., the California Supreme Court held that imposing a duty to provide security guards requires a high degree of foreseeability, and that this degree is rarely met absent prior similar incidents of violent crime on the premises.

The practical consequence is that how you frame the case matters as much as the facts. A complaint that says the landlord should have hired guards invites the hardest standard in California. A complaint that says the landlord let the security gate hang open for a year and disabled the lobby camera is asking about a much smaller burden.

Prior Similar Incidents Are the Evidentiary Core

Everything worth having in one of these cases is a record of what happened before you were hurt. That evidence typically comes from police calls for service at the address, crime reports for the block, prior civil claims and lawsuits, tenant complaints and repair requests, security incident logs, and the owner's own communications with a management company or security vendor.

Similar does not mean identical. Courts look at whether earlier incidents put the owner on notice of the kind of risk that materialized. A pattern of car break ins in a garage is not automatically notice of an armed robbery, though a pattern of robberies and assaults in the same garage plainly is.

The owner's own documents often prove the case

Landlords and management companies routinely commission security assessments, receive vendor proposals, and circulate internal emails about crime at a property. Those documents frequently show the owner was told exactly what to fix and declined on cost. Nothing you obtain from a police department carries the same weight as an owner's own memo recommending the measure that was never installed.

Delgado and the Threat Everyone Could See

In Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, the California Supreme Court addressed a patron who was assaulted after a bar's employee, aware that a confrontation was brewing, escorted him out into the parking lot without calling police or taking other simple steps. The court recognized that a business proprietor's special relationship with its patrons can require a response to a danger the staff can see developing.

The key distinction is burden. Warning a patron, calling 911, keeping someone inside until police arrive, or declining to walk a person into a waiting group all cost essentially nothing. Because the burden is minimal, the heightened prior similar incidents requirement from Ann M. does not apply in that situation.

This is why what employees knew in the minutes before the attack matters so much. Bouncers, front desk staff, and security officers usually saw the argument start, and their statements taken early are often the strongest evidence in the case.

Apartment Complexes and Residential Buildings

Residential cases are the most common, and they usually involve promises rather than exotic security theory. The gate that has been broken since spring, the callbox that no longer works, the exterior lighting nobody replaces, the laundry room door propped open, the vacant unit with a lock that never got changed.

A landlord who advertises a secure, gated, or controlled access building has done two things at once: told tenants they can relax, and set a standard the building can be measured against. Marketing materials, the lease, and the tenant handbook are evidence.

Maintenance records matter as much as crime records. Repeated written requests to fix a gate or a light, ignored for months, turn a general risk into a specific, documented one the owner knew about.

Parking Structures and Garages

Garages concentrate the risk factors: low lighting, blind corners and pillars, stairwells, limited sightlines, and predictable times when people walk alone to their cars. They are also usually operated by a company separate from the building owner, which means more than one potential defendant and more than one insurance policy.

The evidence is specific. Lighting levels measured at the location, camera placement and whether the cameras recorded or merely watched, whether an attendant booth was staffed at the hour of the attack, prior incidents in the same structure, and the operating agreement between the garage company and the property owner, which usually assigns security duties in writing.

Bars, Nightclubs, and Hotels

Alcohol changes what is foreseeable. Bars and clubs know fights happen, know closing time concentrates intoxicated people in a parking lot, and typically staff security for that reason. Having a security plan and then failing to follow it is one of the strongest fact patterns in this area of law.

Hotels are different in character but easier to document. Key card systems log entries, cameras cover corridors and elevators, and staffing records show who was working. A hotel that gives a room key to the wrong person, leaves a connecting door unsecured, or ignores repeated reports about a guest has created a very specific and provable failure.

Who Pays, and How the Damages Divide

The assailant remains legally responsible, and criminal charges may follow, but a criminal conviction rarely produces compensation. The recovery in these cases comes from the property owner's liability insurance, from a management company's policy, and sometimes from a security contractor's policy.

Civil Code section 1431.2 controls how liability splits when more than one party is responsible. Each defendant found at fault is fully liable for your economic damages, meaning medical bills and lost earnings, so you can collect all of those from any one of them. Non-economic damages, meaning pain and suffering, are divided so each defendant pays only its own percentage share.

That matters here more than in an ordinary case, because juries often assign a large share of fault to the assailant, who will never pay anything. Understanding what a case is actually worth means understanding that division before anyone talks about settlement.

When You Probably Do Not Have a Case

Being attacked somewhere does not by itself make the property owner liable, and it is fairer to say that early than to let someone spend two years learning it. If the location had no meaningful history of similar crime, the security features that existed were working, and the attack was sudden and unpredictable, California will not impose liability simply because something terrible happened on private property.

The cases that work have a documented failure attached to a documented risk: the broken gate plus the prior burglaries, the disabled camera plus the prior assaults, the ignored security assessment plus the incident it predicted. If you were hurt badly enough to need a catastrophic injury attorney, the investigation is worth doing before you conclude either way, because the records that decide it are not public and the property owner will not volunteer them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I sue a property owner for something a criminal did?

Yes, in the right circumstances. Civil Code section 1714(a) requires ordinary care in managing property, which can include reasonable protection against foreseeable criminal conduct. The claim is about the owner's failure, not the criminal's act.

Do I have to prove crimes happened there before?

It depends on what you say was missing. Under Ann M., requiring security guards generally demands prior similar violent incidents. Broken locks, dead lighting, and a staff member ignoring a threat in front of them require a lower showing.

What if the attacker was never caught?

That does not defeat the claim. These cases proceed against the property owner and its insurer, and an unidentified assailant is common. It does affect how fault is apportioned at trial.

My apartment gate has been broken for months. Is that enough?

It is a strong starting point, especially with written repair requests and a history of incidents at the complex. The question is whether a working gate would have made a difference in how the attacker got to you.

Does a security guard on duty mean the owner is protected?

No. Having security and then failing to use it properly is its own theory of liability. Post orders, patrol logs, and what the guard did in the minutes before the attack become the center of the case.

What evidence disappears first in these cases?

Surveillance video, which is often overwritten within days or weeks, along with employee memories and staffing records. A written preservation demand should go out immediately, before anything else.

Attacked on Someone Else's Property? Geller Legal Can Help.

These cases are won on records the property owner controls and would prefer nobody read: incident logs, calls for service, tenant complaints, vendor proposals, and the security assessment that recommended the fix. They are lost when video is overwritten, when staff turn over before anyone takes a statement, and when the claim is framed around guards the law will never require instead of the broken gate the owner ignored all year.

Geller Legal | Personal Injury Attorneys handles these cases with the detail they demand. We move on video and staffing records immediately, pull the crime history for the address and the block, and build the case around the specific measure the owner actually owed rather than the one that is hardest to prove.

We serve injured clients throughout California, with offices in Walnut Creek, Oakland, and Los Angeles. If you were assaulted at an apartment complex, a garage, a bar, or a hotel, the property's own history is usually the fact that decides your case, and it is worth finding out what that history says.

Contact Geller Legal for a free, confidential consultation with Attorney Michael Geller.