1
Filed 5/2/17 O’Reilly v. Olympia of Vallejo CA1/5
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION FIVE
MARY O'REILLY,
Plaintiffs and Appellants,
v.
OLYMPIA OF VALLEJO, LLC,
Defendant and Respondent.
A146915
(Solano County
Super. Ct. No. FCS042345)
Two residents of a mobilehome park were stabbed by another resident with whom
they were acquainted. One of the victims died. The surviving victim and the heirs of the
deceased victim filed this civil suit against the mobilehome park, arguing it breached its
duty of care by allowing the stabber to return to the park after he had been previously
asked to leave due to his history of erratic behavior. The trial court granted the
mobilehome park’s motion for summary judgment, concluding the knife attack was not
sufficiently foreseeable. We affirm.
I. STANDARD OF REVIEW
“A trial court will grant summary judgment where there is no triable issue of
material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. A
defendant moving for summary judgment must prove the action has no merit. [The
defendant] does this by showing one or more elements of plaintiff’s cause of action
cannot be established or [demonstrating] a complete defense to the cause of action. At
this point, plaintiff then bears the burden of showing a triable issue of material fact exists
2
as to that cause of action or defense.” (Towns v. Davidson (2007) 147 Cal.App.4th 461,
466.)
We review an order granting summary judgment under the de novo standard of
review, considering “all the evidence set forth in the moving and opposition papers
except that to which objections have been made and sustained.” (Guz v. Bechtel
National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317, 334.) “ In performing our de novo review, we must
view the evidence in a light favorable to plaintiff as the losing party [citation], liberally
construing her evidentiary submission while strictly scrutinizing defendants’ own
showing, and resolving any evidentiary doubts or ambiguities in plaintiff's favor.”
(Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400 (2001) 25 Cal.4th 763, 768 (Saelzler).)
II. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Defendant Olympia of Vallejo, LLC (Olympia) is owned by Susan Syar and
operates a mobilehome park in the City of Vallejo. Richard Stacy was the property
manager of the park from 2008 to 2011, and during that time he kept a daily logbook and
provided daily email memos to Syar. Stacy would include complaints by residents in
these reports.
Lisa Davis-Hernandez owned a mobilehome and rented a space in the park. Her
nephew Cameron Weiss came to live with her in 2009, but his name was not on the
operative lease and he did not register as a resident of the park as required by Olympia’s
rules and regulations. After moving in with his aunt, Weiss exhibited odd and disturbing
behavior. Among other things, he wandered through the park in a manner that frightened
people; knocked on residents’ doors demanding cigarettes and money; harassed children
at the park playground and broke the playground equipment; trespassed into other
residents’ spaces; and hosted parties with excessive drugs and alcohol that led to yelling,
horseplay or fighting. The neighbors to the right and left of Weiss complained that he
was psychologically unstable and one of them, who had small children, erected a fence
around her property because she believed he posed a threat to the community. Weiss was
seen walking around other mobilehomes and according to Stacy, “there was a
3
considerable amount of fear, that property was coming up missing, and that he was an
unsavory individual.”
Stacy spoke to Weiss after hearing the residents’ various complaints. Weiss told
him he had psychological problems and could have a “very bad temper” when he was not
on his medications. Weiss also told Stacy he had been arrested and jailed for assault and
battery. Stacy believed Weiss was mentally ill and although he had never seen Weiss
being violent, he had “deep concerns” about the risk he posed to the other residents.
In late 2010, Stacy served a five-day notice on Weiss and his aunt directing Weiss
to vacate the premises based on his failure to register as a resident of the park. The notice
technically was not an eviction notice because Weiss was not a properly registered
resident.
1
Stacy wanted to get Weiss to leave the property and believed this was the most
efficient way to do so, as the alternative would have been to evict Weiss’s aunt based on
Weiss creating a “substantial annoyance” to other residents, or to issue seven-day notices
based on violations of park rules, followed by proceedings to evict Weiss’s aunt. (See
Civ. Code, §§798.55, subd. (b)(1), 798.56, subds. (b), (d).) In Stacy’s experience, “it’s
very hard to get a person evicted from a park, or anywhere, unless they’re behind on their
money, their payments, because the judge will usually rule in favor of the resident more
so than the park owner, and of course attorneys can be very expensive.”
When no one responded to the five-day notice issued by Stacy, Stacy followed up
by physically escorting Weiss from the park. Syar was aware of the issues with Weiss
and the issuance of the five-day notice.2

1 Although Stacy did not specify the legal authority for the five-day notice, he
apparently relied upon Civil Code section 798.75, which gives the landlord of a
mobilehome park the right to serve such a notice “[i]n the event that an occupant of a
mobilehome has no rights of tenancy and is not otherwise entitled to occupy the
mobilehome pursuant to this chapter. . .” As we discuss later in this opinion, it does not
appear this provision actually applies to an unregistered guest or roommate living in a
mobilehome with the consent of the owner.
2
Stacy testified at his deposition that he conferred with Syar regarding the five-day
notice to Weiss. Syar, on the other hand, testified at her deposition that she was unaware
Stacy ever served a five-day notice or asked Weiss to leave. According to Syar, Stacy
4
Weiss returned to the park to live with his aunt in 2011. His aunt signed a 12-
month lease in July 2011 listing Weiss as one of four residents of that unit. Ada
Hollenbeck was the park manager at that time and signed the lease on behalf of Olympia.
She understood that Weiss was an existing resident when she signed the lease.
According to Hollenbeck, the law made it difficult to reject a prospective resident’s
application to live in a mobilehome park, though a previous failure to follow park rules
would be a ground for such refusal.
After moving back in with his aunt, Weiss became friends with plaintiff Tracie
Mathisen and her boyfriend Davin O’Reilly, who also lived in the park, and they
socialized together at barbeques and at a New Year’s Eve gathering. In her deposition,
Mathisen described the relationship with Weiss as that of “platonic friends.” Weiss did
odd jobs for Mathisen and she took him to the grocery store once or twice.
According to testimony given by Mathisen in her deposition, the relationship with
Weiss was not without its troubles. Near the end of 2011, Weiss approached Mathisen as
she was walking near the playground, yelling and cursing at her and doing karate-type
moves. Mathisen felt scared and mentioned this incident to Hollenbeck. In February or
March of 2012, Weiss approached Mathisen in her driveway, chanting and yelling
obscenities. He came toward her with his fists raised or clenched and backed her up
against a wall in her driveway before Davin O’Reilly intervened and put an end to the
situation. Mathisen did not call the police because Hollenbeck had told her to come to
her first “unless someone is trying to kill me.” When Mathisen told Hollenbeck about the
incident, Hollenbeck said she would take care of the situation and commented, “That’s

never discussed Weiss with her and did not create a file regarding Weiss, as he should
have done if he asked him to leave the park. We assume for purposes of our review of the
summary judgment that Stacy served the notice and that Syar was aware of the issues
with Weiss. (Saelzler, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 768.)
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funny, [Weiss] has never been angry toward me. He has always been nice.” At some
point, Davin O’Reilly and Weiss got into a fight.3
These incidents did not prompt Mathisen and Davin O’Reilly to end their
friendship with Weiss. In mid- to late-April 2012, Mathisen was camping with her
daughter at Lake Berryessa and Davin O’Reilly brought Weiss to the campsite. (Weiss
was ousted from the campground after he carved up a tree with his knife.) A week before
that incident, Mathisen and Davin O’Reilly had gone camping together, but Mathisen had
to return to Vallejo for an appointment. She picked up Weiss and drove him to the
campsite so O’Reilly would not have to be alone.
Mathisen twice loaned Weiss $30 so he could buy cigarettes, and Weiss had not
paid back the second loan. Just past midnight on May 5, 2012, Mathisen and Davin
O’Reilly were inside the mobilehome of plaintiff Mary O’Reilly, Davin’s mother. They
heard Weiss in the mobilehome next door, which belonged to Robert Hughes, a mutual
friend. At Davin O’Reilly’s suggestion, Mathisen called Weiss on Hughes’s phone,
asked to speak to Weiss, and requested the $30. Weiss became very angry and cursed at
Mathisen during the phone call, but eventually he became “nice again” and told her to
come over so he could pay her. Mathisen walked next door and Weiss jumped at her
from Hughes’s front door steps, stabbing her in the abdomen with a knife. Mathisen
screamed for help as Davin O’Reilly came outside with a BB gun. Weiss stabbed Davin
O’Reilly in the heart, fatally injuring him.
On September 17, 2013, a civil action was filed against Olympia by Mathisen,
Mary O’Reilly and Taelor Gunderson (collectively, “plaintiffs”), the latter two
individuals being the heirs of Davin O’Reilly.4
The complaint included causes of action

3 Olympia argues, as it did on summary judgment, that Mathisen’s deposition
testimony regarding these prior incidents with Weiss should be disregarded because it
was contrary to her testimony at the preliminary hearing in Weiss’s criminal case and her
responses to requests for admissions. We assume the truth of Mathisen’s deposition
testimony for purposes of reviewing the order granting summary judgment. (See
Saelzler, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 768.)
4
Taelor Gunderson is Davin O’Reilly’s daughter.
6
for wrongful death on behalf of Mary O’Reilly and Taelor Gunderson, negligent
infliction of emotional distress on behalf of Mary O’Reilly, and negligence on behalf of
Mathisen.
In July 2015, Olympia filed a motion for summary judgment on the following
grounds: (1) Olympia had no duty to prevent the attack because a stabbing by Weiss was
not highly foreseeable; (2) Olympia had no duty to protect Mathisen and Davin O’Reilly
from the criminal conduct of their own friend and social companion; and (3) plaintiffs
could not demonstrate that Olympia’s failure to remove Weiss from the mobilehome park
was a substantial factor in causing the attack. The trial court granted the motion,
concluding in its written order that the “combination of prior incidents, and information
known by [Olympia] and its agents about Weiss, fails to establish the foreseeability of
Weiss’s knife attack upon his friends. There is no evidence of similar criminal conduct.”
III. DISCUSSION
Plaintiffs contend the summary judgment must be reversed because there were
triable issues of fact as to whether Olympia knew or should have known sufficient
information to make Weiss’s assault foreseeable. We disagree.
a. General Principles
“To succeed in a negligence action, the plaintiff must show that (1) the defendant
owed the plaintiff a legal duty, (2) the defendant breached the duty, and (3) the breach
proximately or legally caused (4) the plaintiff’s damages or injuries.” (Tan v. Arnel
Management Co. (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th 1087, 1095.) In the seminal case of Rowland v.
Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 113, the court articulated “ ‘ “a multi-element duty
assessment in determining whether a particular defendant owned a tort duty to a given
plaintiff.” ’ ” (Melton v. Boustred (2010) 183 Cal.App.4th 521, 530.) The Rowland
factors include “the foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty that the
plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant’s conduct
and the injury suffered, the moral blame attached to the defendant’s conduct, the policy
of preventing future harm, 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
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the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.” (Rowland, at p.
113.)
The first of the Rowland factors, foreseeability, is more than one consideration
among many: “If the court concludes the injury was not foreseeable, there was no duty.
There is no need to discuss the remaining considerations. [Citation.] However, the
opposite is not necessarily true. A foreseeable injury does not necessarily ordain a
conclusion of duty.” (Sturgeon v. Curnutt (1994) 29 Cal.App.4th 301, 306 [landlord had
no duty to protect visitor against accidental discharge of firearm by tenant whom landlord
knew owned firearms and had a history of alcohol abuse; injury was not reasonably
foreseeable].) “Foreseeability, when analyzed to determine the existence or scope of a
duty, is a question of law to be decided by the court.” (Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping
Center (1993) 6 Cal.4th 666, 678 (Ann M.).)
With respect to a property owner’s liability for the criminal acts of a third party,
“[i]t is now well established that California law requires landowners to maintain land in
their possession and control in a reasonably safe condition. [Citations.] In the case of a
landlord, this general duty of maintenance, which is owed to tenants and patrons, has
been held to include the duty to take reasonable steps to secure common areas against
foreseeable criminal acts of third parties that are likely to occur in the absence of such
precautionary measures.” (Ann M., supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 674; see Delgado v. Trax Bar &
Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, 235.)
Because the landlord in this case is a mobilehome park and the claims involve the
failure to remove a dangerous occupant from the park, our analysis is tempered by the
Mobilehome Residency Law (MRL; Civ. Code, § 798 et seq.), a comprehensive statutory
scheme that was implemented to protect mobilehome park tenants from actual or
constructive eviction in light of the high cost of moving mobilehomes. (See Castaneda v.
Olsher (2007) 41 Cal.4th 1205, 1217, fn. 2 (Castaneda); Andrews v. Mobile Aire Estates
(2005) 125 Cal.App.4th 578, 591 (Andrews).)
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b. Castaneda Decision
In Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th 1205, our Supreme Court explained the steps
required to analyze the duty of a landlord to protect an individual from the criminal
conduct of a third party: “ ‘First, the court must determine the specific measures the
plaintiff asserts the defendant should have taken to prevent the harm. This frames the
issue for the court’s determination by defining the scope of the duty under consideration.
Second, the court must analyze how financially and socially burdensome these proposed
measures would be to a landlord, which measures could range from minimally
burdensome to significantly burdensome under the facts of the case. Third, the court
must identify the nature of the third party conduct that the plaintiff claims could have
been prevented had the landlord taken the proposed measures, and assess how
foreseeable (on a continuum from a mere possibility to a reasonable probability) it was
that this conduct would occur. Once the burden and foreseeability have been
independently assessed, they can be compared in determining the scope of the duty the
court imposes on a given defendant. The more certain the likelihood of harm, the higher
the burden a court will impose on a landlord to prevent it; the less foreseeable the harm,
the lower the burden a court will place on a landlord.’ ” (Id., at p. 1214.)
In Castaneda, the plaintiff sued the owners of the mobilehome park where he was
a resident after he was injured during a gang-related shootout between the occupants of a
neighboring mobilehome and a car with four young men. Prior to the shooting, residents
had complained to the park owners that they had seen gang members hanging around the
other tenant’s mobilehome. (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at pp. 1210–1211.) One
resident had notified the management that each time she and her sons walked by the
offending tenants’ mobilehome, the tenants would kick their pit bull in the mouth so it
would growl. (Id. at p. 1211.) Another tenant (the plaintiff’s sister) had complained that
individuals from the mobilehome sometimes whistled and hooted at her, causing her to
feel “ ‘a small amount of fear.’ ” (Ibid.) Tenants of the mobilehome had also been seen
throwing rocks and breaking a car’s windows. (Ibid.)
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The plaintiff in Castaneda asserted the mobilehome park owed him a duty not to
rent to gang members and, once having done so, to evict those tenants for disturbing and
harassing other residents. The Supreme Court disagreed. Refusing to rent to suspected
gang members would be contrary to public policy because “[t]he result in many cases
would be arbitrary discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, family composition,
dress and appearance, or reputation. . . . Landlords would thus risk liability whichever
choice they make, and families whose ethnicity, teenage children, or mode of dress or
personal appearance could, to some, suggest a gang association would face an additional
obstacle to finding housing.” (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1216.) Screening
prospective tenants in a nondiscriminatory way would involve a significant expense and
delay for a landlord and would constitute a burden the court was unwilling to impose
“absent circumstances making gang violence extraordinarily foreseeable.” (Id. at p.
1217.)
As for the duty to evict, the court observed that a landlord ordinarily has more
opportunity to assess the behavior of an existing tenant than an applicant, and was thus
less likely to make decisions regarding their potential dangerousness on a discriminatory
basis. (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1219.) That said, “undertaking the eviction of
a tenant cannot be considered a minimal burden. The expense of evicting a tenant is not
necessarily trivial, and eviction typically results in the unit sitting vacant for some period.
In some municipalities—and, more to the present point, under the Mobilehome
Residency Law—the landlord must provide, and may have to prove, cause for the
eviction. Finally, undertaking eviction of a hostile tenant, especially one involved in a
violent street gang, could subject the landlord or property manager to retaliatory
harassment or violence.” (Ibid., fn. omitted.) In light of the burden involved in an
eviction, landlords have a “duty to evict a vicious or dangerous tenant only in cases
where the tenant’s behavior made violence toward neighbors or others on the premises
highly foreseeable.” (Ibid., italics added.) “In assessing whether the facts show
‘heightened foreseeability’ of third party crimes, our precedents have focused on whether
there were prior similar incidents from which the property owner could have predicted
10
the third party crime would likely occur, though we have recognized the possibility that
‘other indications of a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults’ could play
the same role.” (Id. at p. 1221.)
By way of illustration, the Castaneda court cited Madhani v. Cooper (2003) 106
Cal.App.4th 412 (Madhani) as an example of a case in which “the tenant’s behavior
made violence toward neighbors or others on the premises highly foreseeable.”
(Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1219.) The court explained that in Madhani, “the
plaintiff’s neighbor in the defendant’s apartment building shoved, bumped and physically
blocked the plaintiff and her mother on several occasions, as well as berating them.
Despite the plaintiff’s frequent complaints to the defendant's property manager, no action
was taken against the assailant, who ultimately pushed the plaintiff down the building’s
stairs, injuring her. [Citation.] The Court of Appeal held the landlord had had a duty to
evict the assaultive tenant if necessary, observing that ‘[i]t is difficult to imagine a case in
which the foreseeability of harm could be more clear.’ ” (Castaneda, at pp. 1219–1220.)
As a “contrasting example” (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1220), the court
cited the decision in Andrews, supra, 125 Cal.App.4th 578. In that case, the court of
appeal “held one mobilehome park resident’s harassing and annoying behavior toward
another (splashing mud onto the plaintiff’s newly washed cars, aiming a video camera at
his living room, using racial epithets and other verbal abuse) did not make his battery of
the neighbor sufficiently foreseeable for imposition of a tort duty; it did not ‘put
defendants on notice of [the assailant’s] propensity for violence.’ [Citation.]”
(Castaneda, at p. 1220.) The Castaneda court also cited a series of decisions in which
the landlords were held to have no duty to evict a tenant who subsequently assaulted
another tenant: Davis v. Gomez (1989) 207 Cal.App.3d 1401, 1403–1406 (although
tenant had a gun and had acted “peculiar,” grumbling loudly to herself and gesturing as if
“casting spells on those who walked by,” her unprovoked shooting of a neighbor was not
sufficiently foreseeable); Morton v. Kirkland (D.C.1989) 558 A.2d 693, 694–695
(tenant’s brandishing of a gun and his wife’s threatening of plaintiff with a cane did not
make assault foreseeable); Gill v. New York City Housing Auth. (1987) 130 A.D.2d 256,
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[519 N.Y.S.2d 364, 367, 371] (housing authority had no duty to evict a mentally ill
tenant, as to whom no prior violent actions had been reported). (Castaneda, at p. 1220,
fn. 6.)
After reviewing these decisions, the Castaneda court concluded there was no duty
to evict the tenant involved in the gang shooting. According to the plaintiff’s evidence,
the landlord was aware that that one or more of the tenant’s family members were in a
gang, that one of the mobilehome’s occupants had harassed another tenant by causing a
pit bull to growl at her and her children, and that four or five men at the mobilehome had
whistled and hooted at another tenant, making her somewhat fearful. “Even coupled with
[the property manager’s] belief that the occupants of the mobilehome on space 23 were
gang members, the possibility of gun violence established by this evidence does not rise
to a level of heightened foreseeability necessary to impose a duty to evict. No one had
reported that the [mobilehome tenants] or their guests had used, displayed or possessed a
gun at the mobilehome park.” (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1221.) And, although
a rival gang had written graffiti inside the mobilehome park, the property manager did
not know the gang to which the tenants belonged, meaning she had no reason to expect a
confrontation between two rival groups. (Id. at pp. 1221–1222.) In short, “a shoot-out
between two rival gangs was not highly foreseeable, and [the landlord] did not have a tort
duty to prevent it by evicting the [tenants]. ‘A landlord is not obliged to institute eviction
proceedings whenever a tenant accuses another tenant of harassment.’ [Citation.]” (Id.,
at p. 1222.)
c. Analysis
We now consider whether the evidence presented on summary judgment supports
a determination that Olympia had a duty to prevent Weiss’s knife attack on Mathisen and
Davin O’Reilly. We begin by examining the specific measures the plaintiffs claim
Olympia should have taken to prevent the stabbing in this case and consider how
“ ‘financially and socially burdensome’ ” those proposed measures would have been on
Olympia. (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1214.) Plaintiffs argue that Olympia,
having previously removed Weiss from the park in 2010 due to his erratic behavior, had a
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duty to prevent his return or evict him after he returned in 2011. They suggest the burden
of doing so was “minimal.” We disagree.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, Weiss moved
into the park in 2009 and did not register as a resident, in violation of the park rules.
Richard Stacy, the property manager of the park, was concerned about Weiss’s behavior
and used his failure to register as the basis for issuing a five-day notice in 2010 directing
Weiss to leave the park. The authority on which Stacy apparently relied for this notice
was section 798.75, which provides in relevant part: “(a) An escrow, sale, or transfer
agreement involving a mobilehome located in a park at the time of the sale where the
mobilehome is to remain in the park, shall contain a copy of either a fully executed rental
agreement or a statement signed by the park’s management and the prospective
homeowner that the parties have agreed to the terms and conditions of the rental
agreement. [¶] (b) In the event that the purchaser fails to execute the rental agreement,
the purchaser shall not have any rights of tenancy. [¶] (c) In the event that an occupant
of a mobilehome has no rights of tenancy and is not otherwise entitled to occupy the
mobilehome pursuant to this chapter, the occupant is considered an unlawful occupant if,
after a demand is made for the surrender of the mobilehome park site, for a period of five
days, the occupant refuses to surrender the site to the mobilehome park
management. . . .(italics added.)” Section 798.75 is contained in article 7 of the MRL,
governing transfers or sales of a mobilehome or mobilehome park, and on its face applies
only to mobilehome transferees who do not execute a lease with the park management,
rather than guests or roommates of a mobilehome owner who have not registered with the
management according to park rules. Its provisions did not authorize a five-day notice
for the purpose of removing Weiss.
Despite the infirmity of the five-day notice under Civil Code section 798.75,
subdivision (c), Weiss left the park at Stacy’s direction. But he moved back in 2011 with
his aunt’s permission, and was listed as a roommate on a lease his aunt signed in 2011.
Ada Hollenbeck, Olympia’s property manager at the time, testified at her deposition that
she understood Weiss to be an existing resident when she signed the 2011 lease on
13
Olympia’s behalf. Other than the signed lease listing Weiss as a roommate, Hollenbeck
described no other “approval” of Weiss by Olympia. Thus, although Hollenbeck testified
that a previous failure to follow park rules would be a ground for refusing to approve a
resident, Olympia could not as a practical matter have prevented Weiss from moving
back into his aunt’s mobilehome—it could only have refused to sign the 2011 lease
listing Weiss as a resident and commenced proceedings to evict Weiss’s aunt from the
park.
As a homeowner in a mobilehome park, Weiss’s aunt was protected by the MRL.
The only authorized grounds for terminating a tenancy governed by the MRL are set forth
in Civil Code section 798.56, which provides in relevant part: “A tenancy shall be
terminated by the management only for one or more of the following reasons: [¶] . . . .
[¶] (b) Conduct by the homeowner or resident, upon the park premises, that constitutes a
substantial annoyance to other homeowners or residents. [¶] . . . . [¶] (d) Failure of the
homeowner or resident to comply with a reasonable rule or regulation of the park that is
part of the rental agreement or any amendment thereto.” A landlord who terminates a
tenancy based on the violation of park rules must give the homeowner notice and seven
days to cure a rule violation or must have cited the tenant for the same violation three or
more times within a 12-month period. (Civ. Code, § 798.56, subd. (d).) The MRL
requires a minimum of 60 days notice for the termination of a tenancy. (Civ. Code,
§ 798.55, subd. (a).) Thus, even when a mobilehome park owner has a valid legal basis
for evicting a tenant, the procedure for doing so cannot be considered a minimal burden.
(See Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1219.)
Plaintiffs insist that because Weiss was not the owner of the mobilehome or a
direct tenant of the park, he had no rights under the MRL. This may be true, but as a
practical matter, Weiss had moved in with a person who did have such rights, and
Olympia’s ability to remove him from the park was tempered by those rights. Because
Weiss did not have a direct landlord-tenant relationship with Olympia, Olympia could not
bring an unlawful detainer action against Weiss directly. (See Taylor v. Nu Digital
Marketing, Inc. (2016) 245 Cal.App.4th 283, 288–289.) Its legal recourse was limited to
14
action against Weiss’s aunt. Under the circumstances, we cannot agree with plaintiffs
that Olympia could have avoided Weiss’s presence in the park simply by refusing to
approve him as a resident when his aunt signed the 2011 lease, or by asking him to leave
once he had moved in. The burden of removing Weiss, while not insurmountable, was
significant.
5
We next consider “the nature of the third party conduct that the plaintiff[s] claim[]
could have been prevented had the landlord taken the proposed measures, and assess how
foreseeable . . . it was that this conduct would occur.” (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p.
1214.) In other words, how foreseeable was it that Weiss would stab Mathisen and Davin
O’Reilly if he were allowed to continue living in the mobilehome park?
There were no prior similar incidents from which Olympia could have predicted
the stabbing was likely to occur. (Castaneda, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1221.) Weiss’s
previous conduct in the park, though intimidating at times, did not include any physical
violence and did not come anywhere close to the brutality of the knife attack. Though
Weiss told Stacy that he sometimes felt angry when he was not taking his medication and
that he had previously been jailed for an assault, Stacy had no information about the
details of the prior assault offense and there is no suggestion it involved a weapon. Nor
were there any complaints by park residents about Weiss carrying a knife or other deadly
weapon.

5 We need not and do not consider the extent to which Weiss’s apparent mental
illness could have been used to forestall eviction proceedings, thus presenting Olympia
with an additional obstacle in any attempt to remove him from the park. And, although
we reject plaintiffs’ argument that it would have been a minimal burden for Olympia to
remove Weiss, we are not persuaded by Olympia’s assertion that Weiss had a legal right
to stay in his aunt’s mobilehome by virtue of Civil Code section 798.34, subdivision (b),
which provides in relevant part: “A homeowner who is living alone and wishes to share
his or her mobilehome with one person may do so, and a fee shall not be imposed by
management for that person. The person shall be considered a guest of the
homeowner. . . .” (Italics added.) The record does not establish whether Weiss was the
only other person living with his aunt in 2009, and he was one of three other persons
listed as an occupant of his aunt’s mobilehome in the 2011 lease.
15
This case differs from Madhani, supra, 106 Cal.App.4th at pages 413–415, in
which the third party assailant was a tenant who had had repeatedly accosted the plaintiff
and her mother “with violent outbursts and physical assaults” before finally pushing the
plaintiff down the stairs. (Id. at p. 416.) Given the facts of that case, it was foreseeable
the tenant would eventually cause serious injury to the plaintiff. (Ibid.) Weiss’s prior
conduct was closer in nature to that in Andrews, supra, 125 Cal.App.4th at page 595, in
which one mobilehome resident’s non-physical harassment of the victim and his wife did
not make foreseeable a battery upon the victim. Considering all the circumstances,
Weiss’s sudden stabbing of two other park occupants, particularly two occupants who
had socialized with Weiss and considered him their friend, was not “highly foreseeable.”
Olympia did not have a duty to remove Weiss from the premises to prevent such an
attack.
Our conclusion makes it unnecessary to resolve Olympia’s contention that a
landlord does not have a duty to prevent an attack by a tenant’s friend, though there are
significant policy arguments to be made against requiring a landlord to protect an adult
tenant against someone with whom that tenant has voluntarily chosen to socialize. Nor
do we address Olympia’s assertion that causation is lacking as a matter of law because
the attack was triggered by a personal dispute over a debt, and would have occurred even
if Weiss had been living elsewhere.
IV. DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed. Ordinary costs on appeal are awarded to respondent
Olympia.
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NEEDHAM, J.
We concur.
SIMONS, ACTING P.J.
BRUINIERS, J.