Stoiber v. Honeychuck, 101 Cal. App. 3d 903 (1980)

Citation: Stoiber v. Honeychuck, 101 Cal. App. 3d 903 (1980)
Parent Document: Stoiber v. Honeychuck, 101 Cal. App. 3d 903 (1980)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 1980-02-05
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2134128/stoiber-v-honeychuck/ ↗

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However, because we are dealing with the landlord-tenant relationship and the responsibilities of owners and occupiers of real property, we believe the better approach is to apply the rationale of Rowland v. Christian, supra, 69 Cal.2d 108, and hold the common law duty of care to be that specified in Civil Code section 1714 that all persons must exercise due care in the management of their property to avoid foreseeable injury to others. (Id., at pp. 112-120.) As Rowland points out, a departure from the fundamental principle of liability articulated in Civil Code section 1714 “involves the balancing of a number of considerations; the major ones are the foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame attached to the defendant’s conduct, the policy of preventing future harm, the extent of the burden to the de*924fendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.” (Id., at pp. 112-113.) In the typical rental situation involving a dwelling house, the foreseeability of harm to a tenant from the landlord’s failure to maintain the premises in a habitable condition is obvious; the degree of certainty that the tenant suffered injury and the closeness of the connection between the landlord’s conduct and the injury is readily ascertainable by proof in each case; the moral blame attached to the landlord’s conduct in not complying with the habitability requirements articulated in the Civil Code and the policy of preventing future harm are present. Nor can we say that the imposition of a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach would unduly extend a landlord’s burden insofar as the availability, cost and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved. In short, we believe that under the policy standards articulated in Rowland, a due regard for human safety and health compels the imposition on a landlord of a duty of due care in the maintenance of the premises.

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