In the case of Lorenzo v. Calex Engineering, Inc., No. B331177 (March 28, 2025), the California Court of Appeal reinforced the scope of a developer's duty of care under California Civil Code section 1714. The court reversed the trial court's grant of summary judgment in this wrongful death lawsuit arising from a fatal pedestrian accident involving a dump truck en route to an unauthorized construction staging area. The court applied the Rowland factors and determined that nearly all weighed against carving out an exception to the general duty of care. Further, the court held that proximate cause remained a triable issue, emphasizing the defendants' permit violations potentially increased the very risk the permitting process was designed to avoid. This decision underscores the legal responsibilities developers and contractors face when deviating from approved construction plans without proper authorization or oversight.
Factual Background
Core Related owned a three-acre parcel in downtown Los Angeles. In 2018, it began planning a large-scale development project involving the construction of two high-rise, mixed-use towers. Core Related applied for a haul route and soil exportation permit. As part of the permit process, it was required to specify the location of the truck staging area, where dump trucks would line up before entering the construction site, and to identify the maximum number of trucks that would be staged. Core Related represented that all truck staging would occur on-site, with no more than twenty trucks staged at a time. It explicitly stated that a secondary off-site staging area would not be needed. Based on these representations, the City approved the permit on the express condition that all staging occur on the project site.
Core Related hired Tishman Construction Corporation of California (Tishman) as the general contractor and Calex Engineering (Calex) as the excavation contractor. Both were contractually obligated to comply with all applicable laws and city permit requirements. Calex subcontracted with Commodity Trucking to manage the fleet of dump trucks used for soil hauling. Commodity subcontracted with Los Morales Trucking, which employed Stanley Randle, the driver involved in the fatal accident, which is the underlying incident in this case.
Commodity designated an off-site, unauthorized staging area at 23rd Street and Broadway, approximately 14 blocks from the project. Trucks lined up there each morning before being dispatched to the construction site by a Commodity employee.
On April 4, 2019, Randle, driving a dump truck owned by Los Morales, struck and killed two minors. Randle was later convicted of two counts of vehicular manslaughter.
Following the incident, the girls' parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit, initially naming Randle and Los Morales, but later adding Core Related, Tishman, Calex, and Commodity as defendants. Plaintiffs alleged that defendants were negligent in operating and managing the truck staging process and that their decision to establish an unpermitted staging area contributed to the fatal collision. Core Related, Tishman, and Calex moved from summary judgment asserting that they owed no duty of care to the decedents. The trial court granted their motions. Plaintiffs appealed.
Wrongful Death
Plaintiffs brought a wrongful death action, which requires showing a tort such as negligence and a resulting death. Lopez v. City of Los Angeles (2011) 196 Cal.App.4th 675. To establish negligence, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant: (1) Owed a duty of care, (2) Breached that duty, and (3) The breach was the proximate or legal cause of the injury. Brown v. USA Taekwondo (2021) 11 Cal.5th 204. In this case, the defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that they owed no legal duty of care. As the California Supreme Court has explained, "recovery for negligence depends as a threshold matter in the existence of a legal duty of care. Id.
The general rule of duty in California is set forth in Civil Code section 1714(a), which states: "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 or her property or person, except so far as the later willfully, or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself." This statute establishes the default rule that individuals must exercise reasonable care for the safety of others during their activities.
However, this broad duty is not absolute. The rule generally applies only when a defendant has created a risk of harm or worsened the plaintiff's position. A person who did not contribute to the risk of harm typically does not have a legal obligation to affirmatively protect another from that harm. Moreover, public policy considerations may also come into play when courts are applying this rule to a particular set of facts. Kesner v. Superior Court (2016) 1 Cal.5th 1132, 1143.
Duty of Care
Plaintiffs alleged that defendants owed a duty of care based on their negligent arrangement or approval of an unpermitted offsite staging area that routed the dump trucks through pedestrian-dense areas, ultimately resulting in a fatal accident. Defendants' motions for summary judgment required the court to consider two key questions: (1) whether the circumstances give rise to a general duty of care, and (2) if so, whether public policy supports an exception to that duty.
The Court found the defendants owed a general duty of care. Defendants were responsible for a large construction project requiring approximately 90 dump trucks, to travel through downtown Los Angeles. The Court took judicial notice of the congestion and heavy pedestrian traffic typical of downtown Los Angeles and found it self-evident that directing heavy construction vehicles through such an area creates a foreseeable risk of harm to pedestrians and motorists. Based on these facts, the court determined defendants had a duty to exercise reasonable care in the execution of their activities.
The focus of the defendants' appellate argument was the second question- whether public policy considerations justify an exception to this general duty. In evaluating this, the court applied the following factors from the Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal.2d 108 (1968), which include:
- Foreseeability of harm
- Certainty of injury
- The closeness of connection between the conduct and the injury
- Moral blame
- The policy of preventing future harm
- The burden on the defendant and impact on the community of imposing a duty, and
- The availability and cost of insurance for the risk involved.
Before addressing whether public policy warrants an exception, the court considered the defendants' argument that they had no responsibility for the offsite staging area, which they claimed was solely arranged by a third party, Commodity. However, the court decided there were triable issues of fact as to defendants' involvement. Core Related, as the project owner, obtained the excavation permit and represented to the city that staging would occur onsite. The Municipal Code made Core responsible for ensuring that work complied with all approved plans. A Tishman representative testified in deposition that he suspected an offsite staging area existed due to space constraints and a Calex representative stated that Calex learned about the offsite staging area the day before hauling began. This evidence precluded defendants from conclusively establishing that they had no role in approving or authorizing the offsite staging.
Rowland Foreseeability Factor
The Rowland foreseeability factor weighed against carving out an exception to the duty of care in this case. The court reiterated that foreseeability does not require proof that harm was more probable than not. Rather, the standard asks whether a reasonably thoughtful person would have anticipated the risk in guiding practical conduct, even if the injury resulted from a third party's negligence. Under this framework, the court found that defendants' decision to establish an unpermitted staging area for construction vehicles, introduced a foreseeable risk of harm. By staging trucks offsite without municipal oversight, defendants deprived the city of opportunity to assess whether the selected area and its surrounding streets could safely accommodate high volumes of heavy construction traffic. This risk encompassed not only the staging location itself but also the routes used by trucks traveling to and from the area.
Defendants argued the accident, which occurred at 37th Street, was too far removed from the staging area at 23rd and Broadway to be connected, and that the truck driver's unsafe conduct, not the staging plan, caused the fatalities. The court rejected this argument, emphasizing that the duty analysis is concerned with the general foreseeability of harm from a category of conduct, not specific causation, or breach. The record included testimony suggesting that the truck line for the staging area may have extended as far as the accident site, undermining the claim that 37th Street was unrelated to the staging area or beyond the scope of a potential city safety analysis.
Further, testimony from both the city engineer and Calex representatives confirmed that safety evaluations for staging permits routinely consider the potential impact of truck traffic on neighborhoods and pedestrians. Given that the city had no chance to conduct such an evaluation here, the court found it reasonably foreseeable that harm could result from construction vehicles traveling to the unpermitted site.
Although the truck driver's negligence was the immediate cause of the accident, the Court found a sufficient logical connection between defendants' conduct and the injuries to support the imposition of a legal duty. As stated in Bryant v. Glastetter, (1995) 32 Cal.App.4th at p, 782, foreseeability in this context includes situations where the defendants' conduct increases the risk of harm, even if the ultimate injury is inflicted by a third party.
Certainty of Injury Factor
The second Rowland factor, certainty of injury, is most relevant in cases involving tangible harm, such as emotional distress. Where, as here, the harm is wrongful death, the injury is both tangible and compensable. Accordingly, the court found this factor weighed against an exception to the duty of care.
Closeness of Connection Factor
The third Rowland factor, the closeness of the connection between the defendants' conduct and the injury suffered, overlaps with the foreseeability analysis but also considers intervening acts by third parties. As the California Supreme Court explained in Vasilenko v. Grace Family Church, 3 Cal.5th 1079, 1086, where "the third party's intervening conduct is foreseeable or derivative of the defendant, then the conduct does not diminish the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and a plaintiff's injury."
Applying that principle here, the court acknowledged that the immediate cause of the accident was the truck driver's conduct. However, the defendants' decision to establish an unauthorized staging area in violation of their excavation permit also potentially contributed to an unsafe traffic pattern exposing pedestrians to large construction vehicles.
Defendants attempted to shift blame by emphasizing factors beyond their control, such as the truck driver's reckless driving which ultimately led to his criminal conviction in connection with the girls' deaths. However, the court highlighted that the defendants retained control over two crucial elements: the location of the staging area and the decision to operate it without city approval or safety oversight. That level of control was sufficient to establish a close connection between the defendants' conduct and the injuries.
Moral Blameworthiness
Courts evaluate moral blame by considering whether defendants misled regulators, failed to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm, or exercised greater control over the risk than the plaintiffs. Vasilenko v. Grace Family Church, (2017) 3 Cal.5th 1299. Here, defendants misrepresented key aspects of their staging plan to the city, including the location and volume of the dump truck traffic. This misrepresentation deprived the city of the opportunity to assess public safety and implement protective measures. The Vasilenko case explained that moral blame may be found where defendants failed to take reasonable steps to mitigate foreseeable risks. Courts are especially likely to assign blame when defendants hold greater control over the relevant risks or when plaintiffs are less powerful or not informed about the risk.
Defendants also had clear alternatives. They could have complied with the existing permits or sought city approval for an off-site staging area. Either option would have enabled appropriate oversight and safety analysis. In their defense, defendants claimed that the off-site staging area was selected by Commodity, and the location itself was not illegal. The court found triable issues regarding the defendants' involvement in or approval of that decision. Their argument that the staging area was unrelated to an accident fourteen blocks away had already been rejected under the court's foreseeability analysis. By bypassing the permit process, they avoided scrutiny that might have prevented the accident.
Prevention of Future Harm
The next Rowland factor, the prevention of future harm, generally supports imposing tort liability on those whose negligence causes injury. As the California Supreme Court noted in Kuciemba v. Victory Woodworks, Inc. 14 Cal.5th 993, 1026, tort law promotes safety by placing the cost of negligent conduct on those responsible. However, this policy must be balanced against broader societal concerns, such as legal norms that approve of certain conduct or the risk of excessive liability.
Defendants argued that recognizing a duty would not meaningfully prevent future harm, as dump trucks must use public roads to reach construction sites, and construction is essential to alleviating California's housing shortage. They also contend that imposing liability could increase project costs and conflict with public policy favoring the delegation of job site safety to independent contractors. The court reasoned these arguments ignored the central issue. Defendants acted in violation of a city-issued permit. Recognizing a duty in this context would not ban construction traffic, it would simply encourage developers and contractors to ether comply with existing permits properly seek approval for any changes in staging plans, which was a reasonable and administratively feasible safeguard.
Insurance Availability Factor
The final Rowland factor considered the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the type of risk at issue. Plaintiffs noted that insurance was readily available for the constriction project, and in fact, the developer obtained coverage. Defendants did not address this factor in their briefing. Lacking additional evidence, the court found this factor to be neutral. It neither supported nor opposed recognizing a duty of care.
Proximate Cause
Defendants argued in the alternative that summary judgment was proper because their conduct did not proximately cause the plaintiff's injuries. While proximate cause limits liability to harms insufficiently connected to a defendants' conduct, it is generally a question of fact for the jury- unless the only reasonable conclusion is that causation is lacking. Shih v. Starbucks Corp., (2020) 53 Cal. App. 5th 1063.
Defendants claimed that the accident occurred fourteen blocks away from the unauthorized staging area and could have happened anywhere Randle drove that day. The argued that the driver's decision to take a circuitous route, unrelated to the staging site, led to the collision and broke the chain of causation. The court disagreed. By establishing an unpermitted staging area, defendants bypassed the city's safety review process. That omission denied the city the chance to evaluate the public safety risks associated with large trucks navigating surrounding streets. Evidence showed that staging traffic sometimes extended past 37th Street and Broadway supporting an inference that a property safety review might have included that intersection and prompted protective measures.
Thus, unlike the case law cited by defendants, the court here could not say as a matter of law that the link between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiffs' injuries was too remote. There are triable issues of fact as to whether the defendants' permit violation increased the precise risk the permitting process was designed to prevent.
Conclusion
The appellate court's opinion sent a clear message that developers and contractors cannot evade liability by sidestepping safety protocols embedded in the permit process. By reinstating the plaintiffs' claims, the court reaffirmed the importance of transparency, compliance, and accountability in construction-related operations. The decision not only preserves the jury's role in assessing causation but also reinforces the foundational tort principle maintaining those in control of potential hazards bear responsibility for mitigating foreseeable risks. In doing so, this case may serve as a cautionary tale for future disputes involving unauthorized construction activity and public safety.