In Puskar v. City and County of San Francisco, published August 27, 2015, the Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for the defendant public entity. The plaintiff was a ranger at Yosemite. He lived in a residential unit he rented from the defendant entity. The entity provided a fire extinguisher to residential units. The entity took the plaintiff's fire extinguisher for replacement, but did not replace it for nearly a month. The plaintiff was injured by a grease fire. He alleged that the absence of a fire extinguisher in the unit was a dangerous condition of public property under Government Code section 835.
The appellate court held that the fire protection immunity of Government Code section 850.2 applied, and disposed of the lawsuit. The immunity prescribes that a public entity that has undertaken to provide fire protection may not be held liable for failure to provide or maintain sufficient equipment or fire protection facilities. That includes fire extinguishers. The court rejected the argument that the immunity applies only when an entity is acting in a governmental role, rather than the proprietary role of serving as a landlord. The court held that nothing in the statute or its legislative history confines the immunity to governmental functions. It disagreed with language in Vedder v. County of Imperial (1974) 36 Cal.App.3d 654 that so held. Vedder was distinguishable, in that the dangerous condition in that case was not the failure to provide fire protection equipment but rather negligently keeping flammable material on the premises.
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