Tan

INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff Yu Fang Tan was shot in an attempted carjacking in the ungated portion of the common area of his apartment complex. He, along with his wife Chun Kuei Chang and son (together, plaintiffs), sued the management company and property owners, defendants Amel Management Company, Pheasant Ridge Investment Company, and Colima Real Estate Company, for failure to take steps to properly secure their premises against foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. After an Evidence Code section 402 hearing held in limine, the trial court ruled that three prior violent crimes against others on the premises’ common areas were not sufficiently similar crimes to the one perpetrated on Tan to impose a duty on defendants to protect tenants of the apartment complex. The court entered judgment for defendants, and plaintiffs appeal.

In the published portion of this opinion, we hold that plaintiffs’ evidence of three prior violent attacks by strangers in the common areas of the apartment complex were sufficiently similar to the attack on Tan to provide substantial evidence of the necessary degree of foreseeability to give rise to a duty on defendants to provide the…