Page 3
C.A. Declines to Revive Case Against Arena for Attack in Lot
Opinion Rejects Plaintiffs’ Arguments That More Security Would Have Prevented Attack Which Left Fan With Brain-Damage, Saying Conjecture to Assume Officers Would Have Deterred, Expelled Perpetrator
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Sixth District Court of Appeal has held that summary judgment was properly granted to a sports stadium and the security firm it hired in a lawsuit seeking to hold the entities liable for an assault in the arena’s parking lot which left the victim with a debilitating brain injury and, according to his widow, led to his death a few years later.
At issue was causation, and the court found the plaintiffs were unable to prove that the corporate entities caused the victim’s injuries when the attack—which left the victim lying on the ground unconscious—was over in a matter of seconds, leaving no time for intervention even if security officers had been present at the location of the assault.
In an opinion authored by Acting Presiding Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian, filed Dec. 19 and certified for publication Friday, the court was unpersuaded by the plaintiffs’ contention that had adequate security been present in the location, the officers would have seen the perpetrator drinking alcohol and asked him to leave before the altercation or deterred the attacker from acting. Bamattre-Manoukian wrote:
“We conclude that the record from the summary judgment motions presents no substantial, nonspeculative evidence from which a trier of fact could conclude that the acts or omissions of defendants (or either of them) caused Stokes’s injuries. Since plaintiffs could not establish causation…the trial court did not err in granting defendants’ motions for summary judgment. We will therefore affirm the judgments.”
Justices Allison M. Danner and Charles Edward Wilson joined in the opinion.
Complaint Filed
Appealing the defense judgment was Jessica Flores, who, along with her now-deceased husband, Mark Stokes, and their two minor children, filed a complaint in October 2019 against Forty Niners Stadium Management Company LLC and Land Event Staffing Services Inc., the security contractor assigned to safeguard the stadium, asserting causes of action for negligence, premises liability, and loss of consortium.
In the pleading, they assert that Stokes was severely injured in the Levi’s Stadium parking lot in Santa Clara after being punched twice in the face by another fan, David Gonzales, who allegedly had left the game early with friends and was drinking in the parking lot. While walking by the group, Stokes kicked a beer bottle, which struck Gonzales’ car.
As Stokes approached the car, Gonzales rushed him, punching him in the face. The victim fell back, striking his head on the pavement and losing consciousness.
Video evidence shows that nine seconds elapsed between the kicking of the bottle and Stokes hitting the ground. Witnesses consistently averred that the incident happened quickly and that there was no time for anyone to intervene.
Stokes was unable to return to work after the attack, having sustained traumatic brain injuries. Following his death from an asthma attack in 2021, Flores, as guardian ad litem for her two minor children Brooke and Cheyenne Stokes, filed a form complaint on Feb, 22, 2022, asserting general negligence and premises liability.
The complaint asserts that the defendants negligently “failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the violent attack on Mr. Stokes,” despite their knowledge of prior violence in the stadium and its accompanying parking lots, and “failed to provide reasonably adequate security.”
Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Drew C. Takaichi granted defense motions for summary judgment in September of 2022, saying:
“[T]here is evidence that the assault could and would have occurred even in the absence of any defendant’s negligence: [Stokes] kicked the bottle, hitting Gonzales’ car, moved towards Gonzales, and after being hit, continued to move towards Gonzales-all within as little as 5-7 seconds.”
Takaichi rejected as speculative the opinion of the plaintiff’s expert Gil Fried—who described himself as “a public assembly risk management professional”—that the injuries sustained by Stokes more likely than not “would have been prevented if defendants had complied with their own security and guest…policies, including…adequate deployment of crowd management personnel, and enforcement of…rules governing the authorized use” of the parking lot.
Security Presence
Bamattre-Manoukian noted:
“There were at least 923 security personnel working the 49ers game on October 7, 2018, attended by 53,582 fans. Land deployed 528 security personnel for the game, including 64 off-duty peace officers (26 posted to patrol the parking lots on bikes). Land assigned 30 roaming personnel to the particular lot where the incident occurred, including 6 off-duty peace officers on bikes and 24 uniformed Land security personnel….”
Unmoved by this security showing, the plaintiffs argued that the defendants failed to demonstrate the actual presence of security personnel in the parking lots at the time of the assault.
The jurist responded:
“The evidence in the record here does not establish that the acts or omissions of either defendant were a substantial factor in causing the injuries to Stokes. Prior to the act (i.e., Stokes’s kicking the bottle) that triggered the assault, there was nothing to suggest that the violent event would occur….And there is no indication that Gonzales or Stokes had done anything prior to the incident to call attention to themselves with security. Moreover,…the incident was sudden, unexpected, and occurred quickly—within approximately nine seconds. Consistent with how suddenly and quickly the incident occurred, the witnesses from both groups…uniformly testified in their depositions that the assault occurred so quickly that it was not possible to intervene.”
Noting that a showing of a mere possibility of causation is insufficient, she concluded that “plaintiffs could not show ‘that it was more probable than not that, but for [defendants’ alleged] negligence, the assault [upon Stokes] would not have occurred.’ ”
Causation Theories
The justice pointed out that the plaintiffs “asserted two alternative theories in support of their claim that the defendants’ acts or omissions caused Stokes’s injury”—a so-called “ejection theory” and a “deterrence theory.”
Bamattre-Manoukian reed:
“Under plaintiffs’ ejection theory: (a) if security had patrolled the specific area in the vast parking lot where Gonzales was parked, (b) and if security had done so at the particular time Gonzales was there drinking part of a beer…, (c) and if security had actually observed Gonzales drinking…, (d) and if security…had concluded that the Gonzales group was loitering…, (e) and if security had instructed Gonzales to immediately exit the lot (as opposed to having instructed him to dispose of the beer or less urgently having advised him that he should get ready to leave), (f) and if Gonzales had promptly heeded this (assumed) directive by security…, (g) and if there had been sufficient time between security’s directive and Gonzales’s being able to promptly leave the parking area (i.e., before 4:51 p.m.), then Gonzales’s assault of Stokes would not have occurred.”
Under these circumstances, she declared that “[p]lainly, this theory is speculation heaped upon speculation” and “[i]t assuredly does not represent ‘evidence establishing that it was more probable than not that, but for [defendants’] negligence, the assault would not have occurred.’ ”
Turning to the “deterrence theory,” she said:
“[E]ven assuming arguendo that it may be reasonably inferred from plaintiffs’ evidence that security was absent from the parking lot, plaintiffs’ deterrence theory would be that: (a) if security had patrolled the specific area in the vast parking lot where Gonzales was parked, (b) and if security had done so shortly before or during the particular time that the Gonzales group arrived…, (c) and if Gonzales had actually observed security…, (d) and if Gonzales had thought about having seen security during the split second in which he reacted impulsively to Stokes’s having kicked a bottle into Gonzales’s vehicle, then Gonzales might have been deterred from taking the swift and violent reaction of assaulting Stokes. This theory, likewise, is based upon conjecture or speculation, rather than upon evidence that is substantial.”
She rejected the plaintiffs’ assertion that the Fried declaration supported the position that there was a triable issue of fact as to whether the defendants’ acts or omissions were a substantial factor in causing the injury, agreeing with the trial court that the opinions amounted to conjecture.
The case is Stokes v. Forty Niners Stadium Management Company LLC, 2024 S.O.S. 95.
Copyright 2025, Metropolitan News Company