Legal Question in Employment Law in California

If the retail business you work for owns and operates the parking lot where the car burglary occurred, it is possible, but not easy, to prove it was legally negligent for your loss. In order to prove this, you would have to convince a court that the burglary was reasonably foreseeable and that the parking lot operator or owner was negligent in allowing it to happen by failing to provide adequate security. This may require you to obtain a list of all criminal activity that occurred in the parking lot, from the local police department, to show the lot owner/operator was on notice that there is a problem and they failed to take action. However, if your employer does not own or operate the parking lot, you cannot hold it responsible.

If the amount of your loss in question is under $1,000, you can file a complaint in small claims court against the owner/operator of the lot. Once you find out who that is, you can also ask them to submit your claim to their insurance carrier. If they refuse to pay and you have evidence of negligence, you can file your claim.

Generally businesses are not liable for any criminal acts of others, like your burglary. It would be a rare case where you could establish liability, then only if there were multiple and frequent similar crimes on the company lot, that the company knew about, that could likely be prevented by reasonable and inexpensive security measures. If you think you can prove all that, file in small claims court for up to $10,000 [not $1,000].