CACI No. 1000 and 1001: premises liability, the owner's duty and notice

Premises liability in California is negligence applied to property. The Sources and Authority for CACI No. 1000 quote the California Supreme Court saying the elements are the same as any negligence claim: a duty, a breach, and a breach that caused injury. The difference is where the duty comes from. It grows out of possessing a property and having the right to control it (CACI No. 1000).

CACI No. 1000: the four elements

The plaintiff must prove all of the following:

1. The defendant owned, leased, occupied or controlled the property.
2. The defendant was negligent in using or maintaining the property.
3. The plaintiff was harmed.
4. The defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm.

The first element is stated in the alternative on purpose. The California Supreme Court held in Alcaraz v. Vece (1997), quoted with the instruction, that a defendant need not own, possess and control a property to be liable. Control alone is enough. The Directions for Use send cases against public entities to the dangerous-condition instructions that begin at CACI No. 1100.

CACI No. 1001: the duty of care

CACI No. 1001 defines the duty. Whoever owns, leases, occupies or controls the property has to take reasonable care to keep it reasonably safe. That duty reaches looking for hazards with reasonable care and then fixing them, replacing what is unsafe, or warning people adequately about dangers that could foreseeably hurt them.

The jury may weigh factors such as where the property is, how likely it was that someone would come onto it the way the plaintiff did, how likely and how serious the harm was, whether the defendant was aware, or should have been aware, of the hazard, how hard it would have been to guard against, and how much control the defendant had over the condition. The Directions for Use say not every factor fits every case.

Two notes from the sources are worth knowing. California no longer sets an owner's duty by the old categories of trespasser, licensee and invitee, although the reason a person was on the land can still bear on what care was reasonable. And under the nondelegable duty doctrine, an owner cannot escape responsibility for keeping the property safe by handing the job to an independent contractor.

CACI No. 1003: what makes a condition unsafe

When the claim rests on a hazard, CACI No. 1003 sets out what negligence means. The defendant was negligent if something on the property posed an unreasonable risk of harm, the defendant knew or with reasonable care should have known about it, and the defendant failed to repair it, protect against it, or adequately warn of it.

The middle requirement is knowledge. The California Supreme Court explained in Ortega v. Kmart (2001) that a property owner is not an insurer of a visitor's safety, so actual or constructive knowledge of the danger is central to liability.

CACI No. 1011: constructive notice

A plaintiff rarely has proof the owner saw the spill. CACI No. 1011 gives the jury another route. The jury decides whether the condition was of a kind, and existed long enough, that the owner had time to discover it and, with reasonable care, fix it, protect against it or warn about it.

A bracketed paragraph, based on Ortega, says the owner must make reasonable inspections, and that a failure to inspect within a reasonable time before the accident can show the condition was there long enough for a careful owner to find it. Ortega involved a store. The Directions for Use leave it to the judge whether that paragraph fits other kinds of property. The case law also keeps the limit: an owner who inspected reasonably is not liable just because someone was hurt.

CACI No. 1004: obvious dangers

When a hazard is plain enough that a person could reasonably be expected to notice it, the owner owes no warning about it. The instruction goes on to a second rule. Where it is foreseeable that people with no real choice will have to deal with the hazard and could be hurt, the owner still has to take reasonable steps to guard against that risk. The Directions for Use explain that a landowner can owe a duty to take precautions even with no duty to warn.

Questions to sort a premises claim

• Who controlled the property? An owner, a tenant and a manager can each be responsible.
• What was the condition? Photograph it and note how long it may have been there.
• Did the defendant know, or should it have known? Ask for inspection logs and incident reports.
• Was it obvious? If so, ask whether people had no practical choice but to encounter it.
• Is a public entity responsible? Claims against government bodies follow different instructions and short deadlines.

This page explains California's official jury instructions for general readers and is legal information, not legal advice. For a case going to trial, work from the official text and consult a lawyer licensed in California.