Attorney Michael Rehm - (916) 233-7346
Sacramento's violent crime rate stands at 902 per 100,000 residents — 143.8 percent above the national average of 359.1 per 100,000, according to FBI crime data for 2024. When an assault, robbery, or attack happens on someone's property, the first question is often who threw the punch or pulled the trigger. The second question — and the one that determines whether an injured person can recover compensation — is whether the property owner did anything to prevent it.
California law imposes a duty on property owners, businesses, and landlords to protect people on their premises from foreseeable criminal acts by third parties. When that duty is breached — because lighting was inadequate, access controls were broken, security was understaffed, or prior incidents went ignored — the property owner may be liable for the injuries that result. This area of law is called negligent security. It is a subset of premises liability, governed by the same general negligence framework that applies to other dangerous property conditions.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles negligent security cases throughout Sacramento County. If you were assaulted, robbed, or attacked on someone else's property and believe the conditions on that property contributed to what happened, this page explains the legal framework and what to expect.
For background on California premises liability law generally, see the Sacramento Premises Liability Attorney page.
The Legal Standard: Foreseeability
California does not impose strict liability on property owners for every criminal act that occurs on their premises. The controlling question is foreseeability: was the criminal conduct the kind of harm a reasonable property owner in this location should have anticipated and taken steps to prevent?
The primary test for foreseeability in negligent security cases is prior similar incidents. If an apartment complex, parking garage, bar, or retail center has a documented history of criminal activity — calls to police, prior assaults, robbery reports, incident logs — that history bears directly on whether a subsequent attack was foreseeable and whether the property owner took adequate precautions in response.
The California Supreme Court addressed the foreseeability standard in Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224 — a case involving a stabbing in a bar's parking lot. The court explained the limits of the duty to hire security guards:
"In summary, as explained in Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th 666, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 137, 863 P.2d 207, and Sharon P., supra, 21 Cal.4th 1181, 91 Cal.Rptr.2d 35, 989 P.2d 121, only when 'heightened' foreseeability of third party criminal activity on the premises exists — shown by prior similar incidents or other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults in that location — does the scope of a business proprietor's special-relationship-based duty include an obligation to provide guards to protect the safety of patrons. (Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 679 & fn. 7, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 137, 863 P.2d 207; Sharon P., supra, 21 Cal.4th at pp. 1190–1191, 1197–1198, 91 Cal.Rptr.2d 35, 989 P.2d 121.)"
Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, 240.
The duty is not limited to paying customers. In Morris v. De La Torre (2005) 36 Cal.4th 260, the California Supreme Court held that the special relationship between a business and its invitees extends to all business visitors — including people who accompany a prospective customer or who are simply present on the premises. The duty to take reasonable steps to secure the premises covers all of them.
The court in Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Ctr. (1993) 6 Cal.4th 666 established that foreseeability is determined primarily by prior similar incidents, and that the scope of the duty — including whether guards are required — scales with the magnitude of the foreseeable risk. A property owner in a high-crime location with a documented history of incidents faces a heavier burden than one with no such history.
Even where heightened foreseeability has not been established, a minimum duty applies. Under Kentucky Fried Chicken of Calif., Inc. v. Sup.Ct. (1997) 14 Cal.4th 814, a business must at minimum take reasonable and minimally burdensome steps to assist customers who face danger from imminent or ongoing criminal conduct occurring on the premises — including calling police when witnessing an assault, unless doing so would increase the danger or lead to reprisals.
The duty has a defined endpoint. In Glynn v. Orange Circle Lounge Inc. (2023) 95 Cal.App.5th 1289, the court held that a bar's duty to protect its patrons from imminent or ongoing criminal conduct ended when the patrons safely and peaceably left the bar following a fight.
CACI 1005 — the jury instruction used in California trial courts for this type of claim — is titled "Business Proprietor's or Property Owner's Liability for the Criminal Conduct of Others." It requires the jury to find: (1) the defendant owned, leased, occupied, or controlled the property; (2) the defendant failed to use reasonable care to protect people on the property from criminal acts; (3) the plaintiff was harmed; and (4) the defendant's failure was a substantial factor in causing that harm. The full instruction is published at Justia CACI 1005.
What Security Failures Look Like in Practice
Negligent security claims arise across a wide range of property types: apartment complexes, parking structures, bars and nightclubs, hotels, retail shopping centers, music and entertainment venues, transit stops, and office buildings. The failure is rarely a single act. It is usually a pattern — a history of criminal incidents that the property owner knew about and did not address, combined with specific physical or operational deficiencies that made the attack more likely or easier to carry out.
Some of the most common security failures include the following.
Failure to hire or station guards where prior incidents established a pattern. In Delgado, the issue was whether the bar should have stationed a guard in the parking lot given prior violent incidents there. The court's foreseeability analysis turns entirely on what the property owner knew — or should have known — about criminal activity in and around the premises before the attack occurred.
Failure to maintain adequate lighting. Poorly lit stairwells, parking structures, corridors, and exterior areas create conditions that enable criminal activity. Lighting deficiencies are among the most common security failures alleged in negligent security cases, and they are among the most straightforward to document.
Failure to secure building access. Broken locks, propped fire doors, non-functioning key card systems, and unsecured entry points allow unauthorized persons onto residential and commercial properties. In apartment complex cases, the question is often what the landlord knew about the condition of access controls and what steps, if any, were taken to repair or replace them.
Failure to install or maintain working surveillance cameras. Surveillance systems deter criminal conduct and generate evidence when incidents occur. A system that is broken, obscured, or non-functional is worse than no system at all from a litigation standpoint — it shows the owner acknowledged the need for monitoring and failed to maintain it.
Failure to respond to or report ongoing criminal activity. Under Morris v. De La Torre and Kentucky Fried Chicken of Calif., Inc. v. Sup.Ct., the minimum duty at any premises includes calling police when criminal activity is witnessed or underway. A business that allows criminal activity to continue on its premises without intervention — or that instructs employees not to call police — has breached the baseline duty.
Understaffed or inadequately trained security at high-risk venues. In Dix v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (2020) 56 Cal.App.5th 590, the court held that a music festival operator had a special relationship with 65,000 attendees once they passed through security and entered an enclosed venue, and that the operator owed a duty to provide adequately trained security. The Rowland factors did not support an exception to that duty. The same reasoning applies to stadiums, large entertainment venues, and other settings where the operator controls access and the conditions inside.
Sacramento Crime Context
In 2024, the FBI Crime Data Explorer recorded 4,749 violent crimes in Sacramento — a rate of 902 per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 359.1 per 100,000. That rate is 143.8 percent above the national figure. At an earlier peak in 2022, the California Department of Justice documented Sacramento's rate at 92 violent crimes per 10,000 residents, up from 64 per 10,000 in 2019 — a 44 percent increase over three years.
Within the city, crime is not distributed evenly. The downtown K Street corridor sees concentrated late-night incidents tied to the bar and nightclub district. South Sacramento and Del Paso Heights have historically recorded higher violent crime rates than other parts of the city. This geographic concentration is precisely what the foreseeability analysis addresses: a property owner in a documented high-crime corridor who takes no additional precautions is operating in deliberate ignorance of conditions that create a foreseeable risk.
Current crime data for Sacramento is maintained by the Sacramento Police Department's Open Data Portal. In premises liability litigation, this data — combined with the property's own records of police calls and incidents — is central to establishing what the property owner knew, when they knew it, and what a reasonably prudent owner in that location would have done.
Causation: The Key Disputed Issue
Establishing that a property owner failed to provide adequate security does not end the analysis. The plaintiff must also prove that the security failure was a substantial factor in causing the injury. In negligent security cases, causation is often the most contested element at trial — and the issue that defeats claims at the summary judgment stage when it has not been developed carefully.
The California Supreme Court addressed this directly in Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400 (2001) 25 Cal.4th 763. In that case, a plaintiff who was assaulted at a large apartment complex presented evidence of inadequate security — but could not show, as a matter of law, that additional security measures would have prevented the assault. Summary judgment for the defendant was affirmed. The holding is the defense template in every negligent security case: inadequate security plus injury is not enough. The plaintiff must present evidence from which a jury could conclude that the security failure made a difference.
The contrast case is Janice H. v. 696 North Robertson, LLC (2016) 1 Cal.App.5th 586. There, a jury found that a nightclub's failure to post a security guard in the area of a unisex restroom was a substantial cause of a sexual assault. The court affirmed: the club had promoted a sexually charged atmosphere, designed an open restroom, knew sexual activity in the restroom was an ongoing issue, and already had security guards on site elsewhere. From those facts, the jury could reasonably conclude the assault would not have occurred if a guard had been stationed in that area. The causation analysis was factual, not speculative.
What the contrast between Saelzler and Janice H. shows is that causation in negligent security cases must be built from the evidence, not assumed. The key questions are: What did the security failure actually allow to happen? Where was the attacker relative to where security was or should have been? Would the presence of a guard, functioning camera, or secured entryway have interrupted or deterred the attack? Those answers come from the specific facts of each case — the property's layout, the prior incident history, the attacker's opportunity, and the nature of the security that was absent.
In Raven H. v. Gamette (2007) 157 Cal.App.4th 1017, the court held that where a tenant alleged multiple security deficiencies — the absence of security features present in other units in the same complex — the cumulative question of whether those deficiencies were a substantial factor in enabling a nighttime attack was properly submitted to the jury.
Preserving the evidence that builds a causation case is time-sensitive. Police call logs to the property, prior incident reports, maintenance records for lighting and locks, and surveillance footage — which is often overwritten on a short cycle — must be identified and preserved as early as possible.
Damages
Damages in negligent security cases follow the same categories as other personal injury claims. Economic damages include past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, and the costs of future care. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life. Assault, robbery, and attack cases frequently produce serious injuries — traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, stab or gunshot wounds, and significant psychological harm — that require experienced documentation and expert support.
Where a property owner's conduct warrants it — for example, where the owner had actual knowledge of prior violent incidents and took no action whatsoever, or actively concealed prior criminal activity from tenants — Civil Code § 3294 permits a claim for punitive damages. The standard is clear and convincing evidence of oppression, fraud, or malice. Punitive damages are not routine in premises liability cases, but the negligent security context — where a pattern of foreseeable violence is documented and ignored — presents the factual pattern that can support them.
Statute of Limitations
California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 establishes a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims. The deadline runs from the date of injury. Missing it almost always means the claim is gone. There are tolling provisions for minors under Code of Civil Procedure § 352(a) — a minor's two-year period does not begin to run until they turn 18 — but those provisions do not help adults, and they do not extend the time to preserve evidence.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles negligent security cases throughout Sacramento County on a contingency fee basis. No fee without a recovery. Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation — home visits, and hospital visits available.