The city was building a tunnel under the Pacific Ocean. Defendants were the general contractors and plaintiff was the subcontractor. In a contract dispute between the contractors and the subcontractor, a trial court awarded plaintiff damages. It determined that the defendant general contractors were entitled to implied contractual indemnity from the city.

The appellate court reversed in part. The city did not breach any part of its contract. Based on principles of equity, the city cannot be forced to pay where it did nothing wrong under the contract. The contractors assumed liability with respect to the subcontractor they hired.

Plaintiff minor was sexually molested in a foster home. (The person accused of the molestation was acquitted.) He alleged that the social worker breached its mandatory duty of placing him in a relative's home. The trial court granted summary judgment in the county's favor.

The appellate court affirmed. A social worker is not under a mandatory statutory duty to place a foster child with relatives. A social worker is required to place the child in a home that, in her discretion, looks to be in the best interest of the child. The social worker and the county are immune for the discretionary acts of the social worker in placing and supervising the plaintiff.

The City of Hawaiian Gardens Redevelopment Agency wanted to redevelop the land where petitioner's donut shop was located. Petitioner filed for a writ of mandate to compel the Agency to pay him relocation benefits. The trial court denied the petition.

The appellate court reversed. Under the California Relocation Assistance law, if someone is required to move for a public project, they are displaced. A local redevelopment agency has a clear, present, ministerial duty to pay relocation benefits to displaced persons.

Police took plaintiff, age 13, into protective custody after he telephoned 911 and reported that he was being abused. The police took him to a County of San Diego children's center. He ran away from the center, and was hit by a car. Plaintiff sued the County and the center staff for negligence. The trial court granted the defendants summary judgment, finding that they had no mandatory duty to prevent plaintiff from running away.

The appellate court affirmed. No statute or regulation imposed a mandatory duty on the County to prevent plaintiff from running away. To the contrary, the County was statutorily required to place nondelinquent dependent children like plaintiff in nonsecure facilities. (Welfare and Institutions Code section 206.) The facility's internal manual, which required staff to keep children in sight at all times, was not an "enactment" for purposes of the mandatory duty statute (Government Code section 815.6.) At most, the facility had the same duties as a parent -- and parents owe no duty to adolescents to prevent them from running away from home. Since the staff were employees of the facility, they, like the facility, had no duty to plaintiff.

In 1977, plaintiffs bought a two-story commercial and residential building. At that time, the lot adjoining the plaintiff's building was vacant. In 1997, the defendant City granted an application for a building permit to erect a two-story structure on the lot next to the plaintiff's building. The new building was only inches away from the plaintiff's building, thereby restricting light and air through the windows of some of the apartments, and ending the use of the lot as a potential fire escape for the apartment residents in the plaintiff's building. The plaintiffs sued the defendant City for damages from their loss of ownership of the building which resulted from tenants who vacated the building. The plaintiff's alleged that the City had a mandatory duty imposed by the site and architectural review provisions of the municipal code (SAR) to conduct a review of the application for a building permit of the neighboring building; that no review was ever conducted; and that if a review had been conducted, the neighboring building would not have received a building permit or, their permit would have been modified.

The Superior Court held that the City was not liable for damages. The appellate court affirmed. An SAR review was discretionary, not mandatory. Had the City undertaken such a review, a substantially similar building permit would have still issued. Thus, the absence of the SAR review of the neighboring building's plans was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff's loss. If an exercise of discretion on the part of government officials is conferred by an enactment, then even if the enactment uses words that appear to impose a mandatory duty the enactment does not impose that duty for purposes of establishing liability under the Tort Claims Act. The City's SAR review was discretionary and advisory. Since the role of the SAR committee is purely advisory, there is no legal causation between the City's failure to have the permit application submitted to the SAR committee and the plaintiff's alleged injuries. Further, the purpose of the review of building plans is aesthetic and scenic, rather than to preserve access to light, air, and fire exits.

A city awarded a construction contract to a general contractor. The general contractor was required under Civil Code sections 3247 and 3248 to provide a payment bond to the city providing that if the general contractor fails to pay a subcontractor then the surety will provide payment. A surety issued a payment bond for the project and the city accepted the bond with minimal investigation into the surety's status. Plaintiff, a subcontractor, built an improvement for the project. After the plaintiff completed its work on the project the general contractor failed to pay the plaintiff. The plaintiff attempted to collect under the payment bond but was unsuccessful. The surety that issued the bond had become insolvent. The plaintiff sued the city, alleging that the city violated its mandatory duty to investigate the status and solvency of the surety prior to accepting its bond payment. The trial court held for the city and the plaintiff appealed.

The appellate court reversed. It determined that Civil Code sections 3247 and 3248 must be read in conjunction with the Bonds and Undertakings Law, Code of Civil Procedure section 995.010 et seq. Whereas sections 3247 and 3248 only require that a payment bond be posted, the court interpreted section 995.310 to provide that a city has a mandatory duty to require that a surety providing a payment bond must be an admitted surety insurer, or to require two or more sufficient personal sureties, or a combination of sufficient personal sureties and an admitted surety insurer. Since the city failed to inquire into whether the surety met any of those qualifications, it failed to perform its mandatory duty. The court also held that the city had a mandatory duty under section 995.310 to investigate the sufficiency of the surety to pay the amount of the bond, which the city failed to do.

Although the plaintiff was the lowest bidder on a public project, the defendant County awarded the project to another on both mistaken and arbitrary grounds. Noting that the defendant was statutorily required to award certain contracts, including the subject of this suit, to the lowest bidder, the court held that if a bidder relies on this requirement, incurs bid preparation costs, and is the lowest responsible bidder, but the contract is wrongfully awarded to another, the bidder has a cause of action for bid preparation costs against the defendant under a theory of promissory estoppel. This court further held, however, that lost profits are not available under that theory -- because bidders cannot justifiably rely on being awarded the contract.

Although the defendant, the City of Los Angeles, knew that plaintiff's residence was built on land vulnerable to landslides over thirty years before plaintiff purchased the property, the City never recorded a certificate of substandard condition as required by the Los Angeles Municipal Code. Not knowing the condition of the property, the plaintiff purchased the property in 1991. The 1994 Northridge Earthquake severely damaged plaintiff's residence. Noting that Government Code section 815.6 imposed a duty on the City to record a certificate of substandard condition on the plaintiff's property, the court, however, concluded that the duty was designed to protect the public in general and not purchasers such as plaintiff. Moreover, the court found that the City was immune from plaintiff's claims under Government Code section 818.6 (inspection immunity). The court also found that plaintiff's remaining claims (breach of Municipal Code sections 91.0303(a)(2) (duty not to issue building permit absent recording noting knowledge that property is subject to sliding) and 91.7011(d) (duty not to issue grading or building permit absent demonstration that proposal will stabilize property)) did not adequately plead that the City violated a mandatory duty within the meaning of section 815.6, and were accordingly dismissed.

For a decade, the Sacramento County provided free heath care to residents who met the financial eligibility requirements for Medi-Cal, but were otherwise ineligible for Medi-Cal. The County changed this standard in 1992 to be the same as the eligibility standard for general assistance. This change reduced the number of persons eligible for the free medical services by 65%. Here, the court held that the County could not limit free health care to those eligible for general assistance, as Welfare & Institutions Code section 17000 requires counties to provide medical care to the medically indigent, regardless of their eligibility for general assistance.

Absent a special relationship or a statute creating a special duty, the police are not liable for their failing to provide protection. However, Penal Code section 11166(a) creates a mandatory duty for police officers to investigate, and take further action when they learn information that would lead a reasonable person to suspect child abuse. Here, a police officer failed to respond to a report that a child's father was abusing him. If the father's future criminal acts were foreseeable to the officer, then the officer's failure to comply with section 11166 proximately caused the subsequent abuse of the child; this is a question of fact to be decided by the trier of fact.

Neither the city nor the officer was entitled to immunity from tort claims under state law. Because this case did not involve enforcing a law, the officer could not rely on Government Code section 821 for immunity. Because this case did not involve the exercise of discretion, but instead a mandatory duty, the officer could not rely on Government Code section 820.2 for immunity. Since the officer did not have immunity, the city did not have immunity (see Government Code section 815.2(b)).

If a county chooses to create an office of public defender pursuant to Government Code section 27700, the public defender has mandatory duties under section 27706. When a city's office of public defender makes its public defenders unavailable to represent an entire category of indigent criminal defendants (here, those accused of misdemeanors), it violates its mandatory duties under section 27706.

Under Penal Code section 987.2(d)(e), a municipal court has a duty to appoint any available public defender. The court may not rely on the office of public defender's representation that no public defenders will be available to certain classes of defendants in the future. Instead, the court has a duty to determine in each case whether a public defender is available.