RIVERSIDE, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who suffered paralyzing injuries after consuming a large amount of alcohol and plunging from a parking garage has no case against the owner of the structure, a California appeals court ruled, reversing a trial judge who said there were fact questions about whether private security guards should have protected her.
The plaintiff’s late switch from a theory of premises liability to blaming the security guards didn’t help, the Fourth District Court of Appeal said. If anything, the court said, the landlord “decreased the risk of harm” by having security guards on patrol and “did not create any new peril by doing so.”
Christina Demirelli and a friend went to the Xanadu Café in Newport Beach in July 2019 for brunch and “bottomless mimosas.” After consuming four or five drinks, the pair decided to “walk off” their intoxication by shopping at the nearby Fashion Island mall. The wound up in a Yard House restaurant where Demirelli had four gin martinis and allegedly smoked marijuana. Her bar tab showed the only food she purchased was an order of Edamame soybeans.
A Yard House employee escorted them out of the restaurant after they became obstreperous and accompanied them into a nearby parking garage, where Demirelli “began rolling around on the floor of the structure, doing cartwheels, and [engaging in] similar displays of nonsensical horseplay,” according to the court. Demirelli then went to an upper level of the garage and sat on a perimeter wall, where she lost her balance and fell. She suffered traumatic spinal cord injury and her blood alcohol level was measured at 0.30%.
Demirelli sued Yard House owner Darden Restaurants as well as The Irvine Co., owner of the garage, claiming the structure was unsafe. Irvine moved to dismiss, arguing the wall she fell off exceeded the minimum building code height of 42 inches and Demirelli’s behavior wasn’t foreseeable.
Judge Donald F. Gaffney refused to dismiss the case, ruling Demirelli had raised a fact question about whether Irvine’s security officers should have been “proactively looking for anyone who needed any kind of assistance.”
Irvine appealed the ruling and the Fourth District court reversed in an Oct. 24 decision. In their opposition to the appeal, Demirelli’s lawyers abandoned claims the parking structure was dangerous and switched to a theory Irvine’s private security guards had failed to stop her from falling off the wall.
Unfortunately for her, California courts have consistently held landowners don’t need to provide elevated security services to protect intoxicated visitors from hurting themselves. To get around that barrier, Demirelli’s lawyers argued Irvine was liable for “negligent undertaking,” by hiring a security service and then failing to ensure the guards did their jobs.
No such luck, the appeals court ruled. The California Supreme Court has outlined the limits of negligent undertaking doctrine and it doesn’t apply unless the defendant’s actions increased the risk of harm to a plaintiff. Simply hiring guards cannot increase the risk to anyone, the appeals court ruled.
“No evidence shows Demirelli relied on the presence of security to stop her from engaging in horseplay and from ultimately sitting on the perimeter wall,” the court concluded. “To the contrary, Demirelli testified she remembers nothing about the incident, or ever being inside the parking structure—a parking structure she had no reason to enter in the first place.”
Gary A. Dordick and John M. Upton represented the plaintiff, while Irvine was represented by Schumann Rosenberg & Arevalo.