Tooke v. Allen

In Tooke v. Allen (1948) 85 Cal. App. 2d 230, the plaintiff recovered substantial actual and punitive damages from her former landlord based on a common law theory of interference with her right of peaceful possession. (Id. at pp. 234-236.) On appeal, the landlord argued the plaintiff improperly united several claims against him and that she should have been required to assert and prove separate causes of action in order to challenge the various acts he was accused of committing. The Tooke court disagreed, partly because of the waiver doctrine but primarily because it found that the plaintiff could challenge the landlord's course of conduct pursuant to theory of interference with the right of peaceful possession. (Ibid.) The Tooke court found that evidence of the landlord's course of conduct was relevant and admissible to prove the plaintiff's interference claim. (Tooke, supra, 85 Cal. App. 2d at p. 236) But it did not hold or intimate that the plaintiff's recovery for interference with peaceful possession included damages caused by conduct other than the actual interference itself. For example, the Tooke plaintiff's award included lost business earnings because the landlord's interference with possession prevented the plaintiff from working in her apartment. However, the plaintiff did not recover damages for assaults she proved her landlord committed against her because a cause of action for assault had not been pled. (Tooke, supra, 85 Cal. App. 2d at pp. 237-240.)