# Adams v. City of Fremont

> California Court of Appeal · January 4, 1999 · 80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 196

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748770

## Case

- **Full name:** JOHNETTE MARIE ADAMS Et Al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF FREMONT Et Al., Defendants and Appellants; JOHNETTE MARIE ADAMS Et Al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. CITY OF FREMONT Et Al., Defendants and Respondents
- **Court:** California Court of Appeal
- **Decided:** January 4, 1999
- **Citations:** 80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 196; 68 Cal. App. 4th 243
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Haerle
- **Judges:** Ruvolo, Kline
- **Cited by:** 96 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748770

## Opinion text

*289 HAERLE, J., Concurring.
I agree completely with both the result and the path by which it is reached in Justice Ruvolo’s majority opinion. However, what is not addressed in Presiding Justice Kline’s dissent leads me to add this brief separate concurrence.
As both of my colleagues demonstrate repeatedly in their opinions, the special relationship doctrine is reserved for situations in which the authorities have created a relationship of “dependency” with a “vulnerable” individual, here of course the decedent. It is for this reason that, at various points in his dissent, Justice Kline references a “situation of dependency” or a “relationship of dependence” allegedly created here. (Dis. opn. of Kline P. J., post, at pp. 292, 295, 307.) He also suggests that the police action here amounted to an “ ‘undertaking to rescue’ ” by which they “ ‘voluntarily assume[d] a protective duty’ ” {id. at pp. 292, 310), and that the resulting special relationship triggers a duty to take “affirmative action to assist or protect another.” {Id. at p. 292.)
All of this and much more in the dissent might lead the unwary reader to suspect that we are dealing with a “vulnerable” and “dependent” victim, e.g., one who was standing on the proverbial ledge of a skyscraper and was allowed to step off the same. We are not. We are addressing the case of a man with a loaded gun who had already discharged that gun in his own household. This crucial, indeed overriding, fact is totally ignored by the dissent. More importantly, though, the explicit proposition in the dissent that, by entering into this situation and trying to disarm the decedent, the police thereby forged a “special relationship” with him constitutes a radical extension of that principle. It should be, I submit, self-evident that a man with a loaded gun is not exactly “vulnerable” and certainly not in a “dependent” relationship with the police who, for the safety of themselves and the community, are trying to disarm him.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748770. Public record. Not legal advice.