Williams v. Mastro's Restaurants CA2/3

Opinion

Filed 8/19/26 Williams v. Mastro’s Restaurants CA2/3 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION THREE

NATHAN WILLIAMS, B350593

Plaintiff and Appellant, (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. 24LBCV01542)

v.

MASTRO’S RESTAURANTS, LLC, et al.,

Defendants and Respondents.

APPEAL from judgments of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Mark C. Kim, Judge. Affirmed.

Cliff Dean Schneider for Plaintiff and Appellant. John S. Williamson and Connie L. Benson for Defendants and Respondents.

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Plaintiff Nathan Williams appeals from grants of summary judgment for defendants Mastro’s Restaurant, LLC (Mastro’s) and The Irvine Company LLC (Irvine Company). We conclude that plaintiff has failed to demonstrate reversible error, and thus we affirm.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND Plaintiff filed this action for negligence, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, conspiracy, and failure to warn against Mastro’s, the Irvine Company, and other defendants in July 2024. The complaint alleged that several men attacked plaintiff in July 2022 after he left a restaurant operated by Mastro’s and on property owned by the Irvine Company. Plaintiff suffered a broken leg and ankle during the attack. The complaint alleged that defendants were responsible for plaintiff’s injuries because they failed to provide reasonable security and employee training to protect customers from foreseeable risks from third parties.

Mastro’s and the Irvine Company both filed motions for summary judgment, which plaintiff opposed. The trial court granted the motions, concluding that there was no evidence that the risk to plaintiff of third party criminal conduct was reasonably foreseeable. Judgments for defendants were entered on September 16, 2025. Plaintiff timely appealed.

DISCUSSION

I. Legal principles.

A motion for summary judgment “ ‘should be granted if no triable issue exists as to any material fact and the defendant is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.’ ” (Helm v. City of Los Angeles (2024) 101 Cal.App.5th 1219, 1225; Kahn v.

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East Side Union High School Dist. (2003) 31 Cal.4th 990, 1002– 1003, citing Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c).) “On appeal after a motion for summary judgment has been granted, we review the record de novo, 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.)

“Though summary judgment review is de novo, review is limited to issues adequately raised and supported in the appellant’s brief. (Reyes v. Kosha (1998) 65 Cal.App.4th 451, 466, fn. 6; see also Byars v. SCME Mortgage Bankers, Inc. (2003) 109 Cal.App.4th 1134, 1140 [even on review of a summary judgment, the appellant has the burden of showing error]; Frank and Freedus v. Allstate Ins. Co. (1996) 45 Cal.App.4th 461, 474.) ‘As with an appeal from any judgment, it is the appellant’s responsibility to affirmatively demonstrate error and, therefore, to point out the triable issues the appellant claims are present by citation to the record and any supporting authority. In other words, review is limited to issues which have been adequately raised and briefed.’ (Lewis v. County of Sacramento (2001) 93 Cal.App.4th 107, 116.)” (Christoff v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. (2005) 134 Cal.App.4th 118, 125–126.) II. Analysis.

Plaintiff contends the trial court erred by granting summary judgment for defendants because the attack on him was reasonably foreseeable based on the circumstances known to defendants—namely, that there had been four previous incidents in or immediately outside the restaurant, including one in January 2022. In support, he cites Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill (2005) 36 Cal.4th 224, 229 (Delgado) for the proposition that a

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business owner or landlord has an affirmative duty to protect customers or patrons from the criminal acts of third parties. But Delgado recognized a duty to employ security guards to protect patrons from criminal conduct by third parties only in limited circumstances—that is, where there is a “ ‘high degree of foreseeability’ ” shown by prior similar incidents or based on a special relationship between proprietor and patron. (Id. at p. 238, italics omitted.) The requisite degree of foreseeability “ ‘rarely, if ever, can be proven in the absence of prior similar incidents of violent crime on the landowner’s premises.’ ” (Ibid., italics added.)

Our Supreme Court has held that evidence of other criminal incidents on property, without more, is insufficient to create a duty to employ security guards. In Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center (1993) 6 Cal.4th 666, 680 (Ann M.), disapproved of on other grounds in Reid v. Google, Inc. (2010) 50 Cal.4th 512, 527, fn. 5, the court held that previous assaults and robberies in the shopping center where the plaintiff was raped were not sufficiently similar to the attack on plaintiff to require the landlord to provide security guards in the shopping center’s common areas. The court similarly concluded in Sharon P. v. Arman, Ltd. (1999) 21 Cal.4th 1181, disapproved of on other grounds in Reid, at p. 527, fn. 5, where the plaintiff was raped at gunpoint in a commercial parking garage. The court held that the garage’s owner did not have a duty to provide security guards in the garage because prior incidents of violent crime in the building—armed robberies in the bank on the building’s first floor—were “not sufficiently similar to the sexual assault inflicted upon plaintiff to establish a high degree of

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foreseeability that would justify the imposition of such an obligation.” (Sharon P., at p. 1191.)

In the present case, plaintiff identifies just two pages of the appellate record that he contends raise a triable issue of material fact as to defendants’ duty to provide a security guard. The first is general manager Dale Rohde’s declaration that between 2009 and 2025, he was aware of “4 incidents aside from the present matter, that involved guests fighting with one another and police being called to the location as a result. Two of those took place inside the restaurant, and two took place outside the restaurant.” The second is a report of an incident in January 2022 in which a guest reportedly was “exhibiting erratic behavior,” “harassing numerous guests,” and “attempting to solicit [a woman] as a prostitute [for] his friends.” The woman’s friend confronted the guest, and the two men began punching one another.

Plaintiff’s citations to the record do not raise a triable issue of material fact that the attack on plaintiff was foreseeable. The two pages to which plaintiff directs our attention contain little detail about the circumstances of the prior incidents. Even more significantly, plaintiff’s brief does not identify any evidence of the circumstances of the attack on him from which we could conclude that the fights described in the prior paragraph were “ ‘prior similar incidents of violent crime’ ” (Delgado, supra, 36 Cal.4th at p. 238, italics added) within the meaning of Ann M. and Sharon P. Indeed, the only “evidence” plaintiff cites concerning his attack and injuries is a paragraph from Mastro’s motion for summary judgment summarizing the complaint’s allegations. But allegations of a complaint are not evidence and cannot give rise to a triable issue of material fact. (See, e.g., Roman v. BRE Properties, Inc. (2015) 237 Cal.App.4th 1040, 1054 [“It is

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fundamental that to defeat summary judgment a plaintiff must show ‘specific facts’ and cannot rely on allegations of the complaint”], italics added; Lona v. Citibank, N.A. (2011) 202 Cal.App.4th 89, 96, fn. 2 [allegations of complaint “are not evidence”]; Zavala v. Board of Trustees (1993) 16 Cal.App.4th 1755, 1761, fn. 2 [same].) Finally, other than addressing Delgado in a single paragraph, plaintiff provides no discussion of the extensive body of case law concerning a landowner’s or proprietor’s liability for torts committed by third parties.

“ ‘In order to demonstrate error, an appellant must supply the reviewing court with some cogent argument supported by legal analysis and citation to the record. Rather than scour the record unguided, we may decide that the appellant has waived a point urged on appeal when it is not supported by accurate citations to the record. [Citations.] Similarly, we may disregard conclusory arguments that are not supported by pertinent legal authority or fail to disclose the reasoning by which the appellant reached the conclusions [it] wants us to adopt.’ ” (De Meo v. Cooley LLP (2025) 115 Cal.App.5th 17, 41, quoting City of Santa Maria v. Adam (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 266, 286–287; see also Center for Biological Diversity v. County of San Bernardino (2010) 185 Cal.App.4th 866, 899 [“It is not our job to comb through the record in search of grounds to upset the order”].) We apply these principles here, concluding that plaintiff’s appellate briefing is insufficient to show error. We therefore affirm the summary judgments for defendants.

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DISPOSITION

The judgments are affirmed. Defendants are awarded their appellate costs.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

ASHWORTH, J.*

We concur:

ADAMS, Acting P. J.

HANASONO, J.

* Retired Judge of the El Dorado County Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.