County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court

Under Government Code section 815.6, a public entity may be hable for injury caused by its failure to discharge a “mandatory duty” imposed by an enactment designed to protect against that type of injury. 1 Our Supreme Court has explained that, to be mandatory, “the enactment [must] be obligatory, rather than merely discretionary or permissive, in its directions to the public entity . . . .” (Haggis v. City of Los Angeles (2000) 22 Cal.4th 490, 498 [ 93 Cal.Rptr.2d 327 , 993 P.2d 983 ] (Haggis).) In addition, “[i]t is not enough . . . that the public entity or officer have been under an obligation to perform a function if the function itself involves the exercise of discretion.” (Ibid.) Therefore, an enactment’s use of mandatory language such as “shall” is not dispositive. An enactment creates a mandatory duty “only where the . . . commanded act [does] not lend itself to a normative or qualitative debate over whether it was adequately fulfilled.” (de Villers v. County of San Diego (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 238, 260 [ 67 Cal.Rptr.3d 253 ] (de Villers).)

The main issue raised in this writ proceeding is whether the County of Los Angeles (County) had a mandatory duty to capture…