In the Eye of the Beholder: Court of Appeal Finds Duty of Care Owed by Owner and Contractors for Death of Minors Caused by Independent Truck Driver

I was a T.A. for my high school history teacher, a really smart and nice guy, Mr. Reynolds. In the room at the back of the classroom which served as his office he had the picture above. It’s called “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” and is taken from a German postcard from 1888. Depending on how you look it, you might see fashionable young lady, or an old lady.

Cases can sometimes be like that: You see what you want to see. The next case is also like that.

In Lorenzo v. Calex Engineering, Inc., 110 Cal.App.5th 49 (2025), the 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a motion for summary judgment granted in favor of an owner and its contractors in a case involving the death of two minors struck by a dump truck enroute to a non-permitted off-site staging area.

The Lorenzo Case

Owner Core/Related Grand Avenue Owner, LLC entered into contracts with Tishman Construction Corporation of California and Calex Engineering, Inc. for construction of two mixed-use high-rise towers in Los Angeles, California.

Based on the description in the case, Tishman acted as a construction manager for Core/Related, with responsibility for supervising, administering, coordinating and managing construction of the Project.

Calex was hired by Core/Related as the excavation contractor. Calex in turn hired Commodity Trucking to broker trucks to haul dirt from the project site.

In its excavation permit application submitted to the City of Los Angeles, Core/Related represented that the truck staging area for the project – the location where trucks would wait before receiving dirt excavated from the project site – would be at the project site and that no more than 20 trucks would staged at one time. The City later issued an excavation permit based on this information noting that staging would be “allowed on site only.”

Contrary to the requirements of the excavation permit, Commodity used a truck staging area approximately 3 miles away from the project site. Witness accounts indicated that trucks would line up several blocks to the staging area.

On the morning of April 4, 2019, Stanley Randle drove an empty dump truck from his home to the staging area. On his way to the staging area, Mr. Randle struck and killed two minors, Amy and Marlenne Lorenzo. While the case doesn’t describe what happened, Mr. Randle was later convicted of two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

In July 2019, Plaintiffs Francisco Lorenzo and Angelina Nicolas, presumably the parents of the two girls, field a wrongful death complaint against various parties which eventually included Core/Related, Tishman and Calex. Core/Related, Tishman and Calex later filed a motion for summary judgment on the ground that they owed no duty to the minors.

The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment and Plaintiffs appealed.

The Appeal

On appeal, the 2nd District Court of Appeal outlined the standard of appellate review, namely, that the appellate courts will review motions for summary judgement granted by a lower court de novo and will affirm such rulings if the papers submitted show there “is no triable issues of material fact” looking at the evidence “in the light most favorable” to the non-moving party.

The Court of Appeal explained that wrongful death actions, like negligence actions, look at whether (1) a defendant had a duty of care, (2) whether that duty was breached, (3) and if the breach of that duty was the proximate or legal cause of the resulting injury.

Civil Code section 1714, explained the Court of Appeal, sets forth the general rule of duty and provides that:

Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his her property or person, except so far as the later has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself.

While broad, the duty of care has its limits, and only applies where a defendant has “created a risk” of harm to a plaintiff, including when “the defendant is responsible for making the plaintiff’s position worse.” Thus, a “‘person who has not created a peril is not liable in tort merely for failure to take affirmative action to assist or protect another’ from that peril.”

Even when Civil Code section 1714 would otherwise apply, “public policy concerns [may] outweigh” that “broad principle” and “justify a departure from Civil Code section 1714’s default rule of duty.” In determining whether public policy concerns outweigh default rule of duty under Civil Code section 1714, courts look to the Rowland factors, named after the case Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108 (1968). The Rowland factors include examination of:

1. Foreseeability: The foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff;

2. Certainty: The degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury;

3. Connection: The closeness of the connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury suffered;

4. Moral Blame: The moral blame attached to the defendant’s conduct;

5. Prevention of Future Harm: The policy of preventing future harm;

6. Burden and Consequences of Imposing a Duty: The extent of the burden to the defendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach; and

7. Insurance: The availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.

Here, explained the Court of Appeal, Core/Related, Tishman and Calex owed a duty of care to the minors. “It is common sense that sending large numbers of heavy construction vehicles [through the streets of downtown Los Angeles over the course of many days that are crowded with vehicles and pedestrians] creates a risk of harm to those other vehicles and pedestrians. Defendants therefore had a duty ‘to exercise, in [their] activities, reasonable care for the safety of others.'”

The question therefore arises whether the Rowland factors support departure from Civil Code section 1714. Applying the factors, the Court of Appeal held:

1. Foreseeability: Establishing an unpermitted staging area for construction vehicles, thereby bypassing the City’s safety evaluation, created a foreseeable possibility of a traffic-related accident as those vehicles approach the staging area;

2. Certainty: The second Rowland factor, explained the Court of Appeal, “is relevant ‘primarily, if not exclusively when the only claimed injury is an intangible harm, such as emotional distress,'” and, here, wrongful death Is both tangible and amenable to compensation;

3. Connection: While acknowledging that the truck driver was directly responsible for the death of the minors, the Court of Appeal explained that “the driver’s conduct was ‘foreseeable or derivative’ of defendants’ alleged negligence”;

4. Moral Blame: The defendants were morally blameworthy by misrepresenting to the City the scope of their staging plan, thereby depriving the City of the opportunity to assess the safety of the staging plan;

5. Prevention of Future Harm: Imposing liability under the circumstances would, at minimum, encourage developers and contractors to comply with their permits or seek permission for a change in use. ; and

6. Insurance: Liability insurance for construction projects is widely available and was available for this particular project.

This was not, however, a unanimous decision.

Justice Rothschild – highlighting that how one frames the duty owed may change the outcome- dissented. Rather than framing the duty as whether defendants owed a duty of care to plaintiffs not to use an unpermitted off-site staging area, Justice Rothschild framed the duty as whether defendants owed a duty of care to plaintiffs injured by a negligent truck driver driving from his home.

As to the first of the Rowland factors – foreseeability – Justice Rothschild pointed out that, under the majority’s analysis, every employer requiring its workers to go to work could foreseeably cause risk to others.

As to the second of the Rowland factors – certainty – Justice Rothschild stated that he did not disagree with the majority.

As to the third of the Rowland factors – connection – Justice Rothschild argued that the majority’s analysis was based on speculation by the City that, if the City had been informed of the off-site staging area, it might have designated a string area approach that might have avoided the particular intersection where the incident occurred.

As to the fourth of the Rowland factors – moral blame – Justice Rothschild argued that whether staging was at the project site or off-site, large numbers of heavy construction vehicles would need to travel through downtown Los Angeles.

As to the fifth of the Rowland factors – prevention of future harm – Justice Rothschild argued that imposing a duty to protect pedestrians from risks of harm caused by a negligent independent truck driver over whom they have no control imposes a liability out of proportion to the defendant’s culpability.

Finally, as to the sixth of the Rowland factors – insurance – Justice Rothschild pointed out that the record does not indicate whether insurance would cover the risks encompassed by the majority’s “expansive” holding.

Conclusion

When reading cases I have tendency to pick a side. This was a difficult case for me to pick a side. Was the use of a non-permitted staging area morally so blame worthy that liability should attach to the defendants? Or was the non-permitted staging area just the tail wagging the proverbial dog, because even if the off-site location was permitted or if trucks were staged on-site at the project site as required, the fatalities might have occurred in any event (or, hypothetically, someone else might have been killed instead)? I think it’s a tough one.