Zuniga v. Housing Authority

In Zuniga v. Housing Authority (1995) 41 Cal.App.4th 82, the Second District Court of Appeal determined a public housing authority's failure to take appropriate security measures to protect tenants from certain drug dealers known to have violent tendencies constituted a sufficiently dangerous condition of public property to survive a demurrer. ( Zuniga v. Housing Authority, supra, 41 Cal.App.4th at p. 93.) "We do not find to be minor or trivial," the court reasoned, "the existence of persons with criminal tendencies who regularly congregate outside a housing unit, preventing access to the main entrance and regularly assaulting the tenants while they were using the housing unit in the manner in which it was intended to be used." ( Id. at pp. 93-94.) The Zuniga court determined the nuisance caused by the drug dealers was a dangerous condition of public property without citing to any analogous authority. The case the court claimed was most factually similar was O'Hara v. Western Seven Trees (1977) 75 Cal.App.3d 798, involving a woman suing her landlord for negligence when she was raped in her apartment building. However, that case was a claim for negligence against a private landowner. It did not concern whether the facts satisfied the elements of a claim for dangerous condition of public property under Government Code section 835. Because the Zuniga conclusion stands without precedent, we decline to extend it to this case. ( Zuniga v. Housing Authority, supra, at p. 94.)