May 4, 2021

Issakhani v. Shadow Glen Homeowners Assn., Inc. B301746 (April 30, 2021)

A visitor to a condo complex who could not find guest parking in the onsite parking lot parked her car on the other side of a five-lane highway. While jaywalking across the highway to reach the complex, she was struck by a car. She sued the complex’s homeowners’ association, claiming it was responsible for her injuries because it did not have enough onsite parking spaces for guests, as allegedly required both by the common law and a local ordinance. The trial court granted summary judgment for the association.

The Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that the association had no duty to guests to provide onsite parking because (a) binding precedent “forecloses imposing a duty upon a landowner to provide invitees with onsite parking in order to protect them from the obvious dangers of crossing nearby streets to get to the property” (e.g., Vasilenko v. Grace Family Church (2017) 3 Cal.5th 1077), (b) the connection between the landowner’s conduct and the injury suffered was too attenuated, especially “where it was the visitor’s decision—rather than the landowner’s—to select an offsite parking space on the far side of a busy street,” (c) “[i]mposing a duty to provide sufficient onsite parking to accommodate all invitees would not be especially effective in preventing future harm,” (d) imposing such a duty “would also impose an unacceptably heavy burden [on the landowner],” and (e) no duty of care could be grounded on a zoning ordinance that imposed a condition for additional "guest parking" applicable to only a single parcel and embodied no “general public policy . . . .”

H&L represented the defendant on appeal.