The lower court decision cannot possibly be upheld in the higher courts, because decisions of higher courts, unlike the former, create precedent; and the precedent that upholding such a decision would establish, would be nothing short of catastrophic for California's legal system**. As the Maine Supreme Court stated in a 1999 decision:
There does not exist a general obligation to protect others from harm not created by the actor. "The fact that the actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another's aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action." Restatement (Second) of Torts § 314 (1965). In other words, the mere fact that one individual knows that a third party is or could be dangerous to others does not make that individual responsible for controlling the third party or protecting others from the danger...
The creation of an amorphous common law duty on the part of a church or other voluntary organization requiring it to protect its members from each other would give rise to "both unlimited liability and liability out of all proportion to culpability." Cameron v. Pepin, 610 A.2d 279, 283 (Me. 1992)
What follows a bit farther below is the Maine Supreme Court decision that the above quote was taken from, reproduced in full for this blog. Take note that the circumstances and claims of the Plaintiff are almost an exact replica, detail for detail, of the Candace Conti case. If the names and locations were removed from both cases, a casual reader would probably have great difficulty distinguishing between them. And yet, interestingly enough, despite the striking similarities, the Maine Supreme Court came to a very different decision on the Bryan case than did the Alameda Superior Court in handling the Conti Case.
