The Law

Building Code Not Required Standard by Ron Davis A freak accident at a California shopping center has focused on standards needed to protect center employees and customers from injury. The shopping center is located in the Los Angeles area city of Hacienda Heights. And the accident occurred in front of a tenant store that faces the center’s parking area. An employee of that store, while on lunch break and seated on a step leading to and from the parking area, was a victim of a runaway vehicle. Details of accident reveal that the driver had apparently lost control of the vehicle, which jumped the 5-1/2-inch curb from a parking space and hit the employee before eventually crashing. The employee suffered severe injuries from the blow he sustained. The victim sued the center’s owners for negligence and “premises liability.” He alleged his injuries resulted from “improper barriers in the parking lot to prevent automobiles from going up on pedestrian areas.” He added that “if a person hit the gas instead of the brakes in coming to a stop in parking, there was very little obstruction to their going up into the buildings.” The victim also noted the occurrence at the shopping center of two previous incidents in which cars had jumped the parking-lot curb. Those incidents, he argued, should have put the center’s owners on notice that the existing curb was not adequate to meet existing local standards. The center’s owners rejected that argument. They pointed to an expert’s evidence that the center parking lot’s 5-1/2-inch curb fronting the sidewalk complies with the California building code. Such evidence, they added, disputed the argument that the curb’s size and placement created an unreasonably dangerous condition. A California court ruled that the victim of the runaway car “cannot establish that his injuries were occasioned by want of ordinary care or skill by the management of [the shopping center] property, nor that the injury was foreseeable.” The judge explained that “the existence of a clearly visible 5-1/2-inch curb separating the walkway from the parking lot, undisputed by the victim, and evidence that the curb complied with the applicable building code, precluded the victim from establishing that his injuries resulted from a want of ordinary care or skill in the management of the shopping center.” The accident victim appealed that ruling. A California appellate court reversed the lower-court judge, while agreeing that property owners cannot be held to be “insurers of public safety.” But, reminded the judge, “the converse is also true: the law does not specify that a 5-1/2-inch curb is the most that is required of shopping center owners in order to satisfy their duty of care to pedestrians adjacent to their parking lots.” (Shuwen Yang v. Pacific Castle Colima, LP, 2011 WL 6091245 [Cal.App. 2 Dist.]) Decision: December 2011 Published: December 2011