A Parent at the Kitchen Table in Orinda
You are reading this at 1 a.m. because your phone rang the night of October 31, 2019, and the voice on the other end said your son was shot at a Halloween party in a house in your own neighborhood — a house you did not know was being rented out for a mansion party that was being advertised on social media. You drove to Lucille Way. You saw the yellow tape. The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s deputies were still there. Some of the people you grew up with were carried out on stretchers. Five young people never came home. Five more were wounded. The rest of the night, and the weeks after, are a kind of blur that has not lifted.
Now, years later, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office has declined to file criminal charges against the five men that deputies arrested. The DA’s announcement reads, in part, that the office will “need more information” in order to file charges. A sheriff’s spokesman said, “We stand by our investigation.” That left your family with a feeling that the system you trusted had moved on, and the only thing left was a civil case against the parties who profited from a dangerous weekend gathering that was advertised openly on Instagram and other platforms, and the platform that hosts the listings, and the local property owner, and the host who checked the guests in.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We work with families across California who have been failed once by a system and need someone to take the next step. A criminal declination does not end the case against the company that took the booking, the host who took the money, or the property owner who let the night happen. It opens one. This page is built to walk you through what the next step looks like, in California law, in real evidence, and in real numbers.
What Happened That Night on Lucille Way
On the evening of October 31, 2019, a short-term rental home in the 100 block of Lucille Way in Orinda, Contra Costa County, was the site of a mass shooting. The event was described in later reporting and sheriff’s statements as a “mansion party” — advertised on social media as an open Halloween gathering. The home is in a quiet residential pocket of Orinda, accessed by a narrow, winding road not built to absorb the kind of late-night crowd a viral party listing pulls in. As the night progressed, a confrontation between groups of guests escalated. At some point a gun was drawn. By the time the shooting stopped, ten people had been shot.
Five died. Five more were wounded. The dead included local young people and visitors. The Sheriff’s Office described the aftermath as a “bloodbath” and said that “some people went to the party with the intent of causing harm and conflict.” At least two of the victims who died were found to have been armed, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The investigation ran for roughly two weeks. On November 8, 2019, deputies arrested five men: Jaquez Deshawn Sweeney, 20, of Marin City; Jason Iles, 20, of Marin City; Lebraun Tyree Wallace, 28, of San Mateo; Shamron Joshua Mitchell, 30, of Antioch; and Devin Isiah Williamson, 21, of Vallejo. The four older suspects were booked on suspicion of murder and conspiracy; Williamson was booked on suspicion of being an accessory.
On November 18, 2019, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office declined to file criminal charges against all five. A Sheriff’s spokesman said the arrests had been made “pursuant to a judge’s order” based on probable-cause warrants, and that the office “stands by our investigation” while deferring to the DA on filing decisions. The DA’s office said “everything’s on the table” depending on what the evidence showed, and that the case was “very complex.” In the days after, Airbnb announced that the company would pay for funerals and counseling of the victims — a corporate statement that, in the language of civil liability, is not generosity, it is recognition. The family of Raymon Hill Jr. spoke publicly through their attorney Jesse Danoff, who said that Airbnb “allowed dangerous party conditions that led to their son’s death.”
The DA’s declination did not erase the facts. It only meant that the people who planned and fired the guns could not be charged in criminal court. The civil system runs on a different standard, and the people who profited from the gathering — the host, the property owner, and the platform that connected them — are reachable in civil court under California law. That is the work this page is designed to help you think about.
Why the DA’s Decision Does Not Close Your Civil Case
Families often feel that a criminal declination ends the conversation. It does not. The criminal system and the civil system ask different questions, require different proof, and run in different courtrooms. The District Attorney had to prove the shooters’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, to a unanimous jury, on the elements of murder and conspiracy. The shooter was the person who pulled the trigger. The civil case against the people who profited from the gathering — the platform, the property owner, the host — does not have to prove who fired the fatal shot. It has to prove that the people who made money from the night failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the kind of harm that a jury would find was foreseeable, and that the failure was a substantial factor in bringing the harm to your family.
California is a pure comparative-negligence state. Under California Civil Code § 1714, “Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person.” That includes the company that owns the home, the host who rented it out, and the platform that hosted the listing. The same statute is the foundation of the wrongful-death claim and the survival claim. It does not matter that the criminal shooters were not the same legal people as the hosts. The hosts owed a duty of care that is independent of the shooters’ acts, and that duty runs to the people who came onto the property and were injured.
The DA’s declination is a piece of information, not a verdict. It tells us the case is contested, and that the next round of the fight will be in a different forum.
The Legal Architecture of a Civil Case After the Orinda Shooting
A civil case arising out of the Orinda shooting has at least three independently powerful tracks, and the strongest cases will run them together.
Negligent Security Against the Property Owner and the Host
California has eliminated the old common-law distinctions between invitees, licensees, and trespassers for purposes of premises liability. Under Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, the duty owed by a property owner to anyone lawfully on the property is the duty of “reasonable care under the circumstances.” The owner of the Lucille Way home owed a duty of reasonable care to every guest on the property that night. That duty included taking reasonable steps to protect guests from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties.
Foreseeability is the spine of a negligent-security case. A jury will be asked whether the property owner and the host knew, or should have known, that the gathering they were hosting was likely to attract violence. The public record already contains the kind of facts a jury uses to answer that question: the party was advertised as a “mansion party” on social media; the home is on a narrow, winding road in a quiet residential neighborhood; the gathering was already openly discussed online; large, openly-advertised Halloween gatherings at short-term rentals had been the subject of news coverage and platform warnings in the years leading up to the shooting; and the home is not a venue — it is a residence, with no security infrastructure appropriate to the crowd size.
The legal standard the jury will be instructed on is the CACI series of instructions on premises liability, including CACI 1000 (the basic duty of care owed by a property owner), CACI 1001 (the duty to warn of dangerous conditions), and CACI 1002 (the duty to remedy dangerous conditions). Where a property owner has superior knowledge of a dangerous condition that the guest does not, and the guest is harmed, the owner is liable. A “mansion party” advertised to hundreds of people on Instagram, held in a quiet residential home, with no security personnel, no controlled access, and no screening at the door, is the kind of dangerous condition that California law says the owner has a duty to address.
Premises Liability Against the Platform and the Booking Chain
The home was being used as a short-term rental. In California, short-term rentals are regulated at the municipal level, and the host and the property owner have specific obligations to the guests and to the neighborhood. The City of Orinda had ordinances governing short-term rentals at the time of the shooting, and those ordinances carried specific obligations about the type of gathering that could be hosted, the hours, the parking, the noise, and the responsibility of the host to prevent nuisance and disorderly conduct. The host and the property owner took on those obligations when they listed the home and accepted the booking.
The platform that hosted the listing is a separate defendant with its own obligations. A platform that represents to the public that a property is “verified,” “safe,” and “suitable for gatherings” — and that collects a commission on the booking — has, under California product-liability and negligence law, a duty to use reasonable care in the representations it makes and the policies it enforces. The company had a stated “no-party” policy at the time of the shooting. A jury can be asked whether the company did anything meaningful to enforce that policy for this booking, and whether the absence of enforcement was a substantial factor in bringing dangerous and foreseeable violence to a quiet residential street.
The platform’s own published standards at the time required hosts to confirm that the property was suitable for the booked use, that local laws were followed, and that gatherings did not exceed the property’s capacity. A property advertised as a “mansion party” venue, on a residential street, on Halloween night, was at the outer edge of what those standards were meant to address. A jury can find that the platform either knew or should have known that the booking did not match the standards, and that the platform’s enforcement was window-dressing.
Wrongful Death and Survival Under California Law
If your loved one died, two separate civil claims run in parallel: the wrongful-death claim and the survival claim. They are different in who files, what they recover, and how they are calculated. Together they capture the full scope of what the law can address.
The wrongful-death claim is brought by the heirs of the deceased or, if there is no will, by the persons entitled to the property of the deceased under California intestate succession law. The claim is for the benefit of the heirs, and the damages are the heirs’ own losses: the financial support the heir would have received, the household services the deceased would have provided, the value of the financial guidance, training, and education the heir would have received, and — depending on the heir — the loss of companionship, affection, and consortium. The claim belongs to the family, not to the deceased.
The survival claim is brought by the personal representative of the deceased’s estate. It carries forward the claim the deceased would have had. The damages are the deceased’s own losses: the pain, suffering, and disfigurement the deceased experienced between the moment of injury and the moment of death, the medical and funeral expenses the deceased incurred, and the punitive damages that would have been available if the deceased had survived. Where death is instantaneous, the survival claim is small. Where the deceased lingered in a hospital, the survival claim can be substantial.
California’s wrongful-death statute is found at Code of Civil Procedure § 377.20 through § 377.34, with the damages rules at § 377.34. The two-year statute of limitations for wrongful death runs from the date of death under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. We address the limitations clock specifically below, because it is the single most date-sensitive issue in this case.
“Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person, except so far as the latter has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself or herself.” — California Civil Code § 1714(a).
That sentence, written into California law in 1872 and reaffirmed in Rowland and the cases that followed, is the sentence the case will be built on.
What Evidence Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Disappears
The Orinda shooting case is unusually evidence-rich because the night was widely documented by guests, posted on social media before and during the event, and investigated by multiple law-enforcement agencies. The challenge is that the most useful evidence is also the most perishable. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can die.
The Reservation and Booking Records
The booking was made through the platform, so a complete record exists of: the host’s listing, the host’s communications with the platform, the booking confirmation, the guest list, the dates of stay, the price, the platform’s commission, the host’s calendar, and any messages between the host and the guests. The platform retains booking records in the ordinary course of business, but it retains them under its own retention policy, not under a court order, and a litigation hold is the only thing that prevents the records from being purged under routine data lifecycle. The property owner has separate records: the lease, the short-term rental permit, the City of Orinda registration, the local tax filings, and the host’s communications with the owner. The property owner can be compelled to produce them.
The Social Media Trail
The party was openly advertised as a “mansion party” on social media. The advertisements, the messages between guests, the live-stories during the party, and the photographs of the gathering are the public record of the night, and they are the spine of a foreseeability argument. The platform and the social-media companies each retain their own records of these posts, and the records can be obtained through a preservation letter, a subpoena, or a court order. The photographs and the videos that guests posted on their own phones are the most fragile. A guest who goes to a mansion party is not a careful archivist. Phones get lost, broken, replaced, or wiped. Witnesses move. The sooner the preservation demand is made — to the platform, to the social-media companies, and through counsel to identified guests — the more of the social media record survives.
Surveillance Footage
The Lucille Way home sits on a quiet residential street. The home itself may have doorbell cameras, exterior cameras, or interior cameras; the neighbors may have doorbell or exterior cameras. None of those cameras retain footage indefinitely. Consumer cloud-camera services typically retain footage for 30 days, with some services retaining as little as 7 days and others as long as 60 days. The neighbors’ cameras are governed by their own retention settings. The platform’s host-protection cameras (if any) are governed by the host’s account settings. Once the footage rolls over, it is gone. The time-sensitive preservation demand is the only thing that captures it.
The Law Enforcement Files
The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office ran the investigation, working with the FBI, San Francisco police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and police in San Mateo, Marin City, Vallejo, Antioch, and Orinda. The investigative file — including witness statements, surveillance video taken during the investigation, ballistics reports, scene photographs, dispatch audio, and the criminal intelligence shared between agencies — is the single most complete record of the night. The file is held by the Sheriff’s Office and, where the FBI was involved, by the FBI. California law (the California Public Records Act, Government Code § 7920.000 et seq.) gives the public a right of access to certain investigatory records, with specific exemptions for active investigations, juvenile records, and personal information. Counsel can file a CPRA request and, if necessary, a subpoena duces tecum, to obtain the records the family needs.
The Host’s Communications
The host’s own communications — with the platform, with the guests, with the property owner, and with the host’s own network — are the most contested and most revealing. They include any messages the host sent advertising the event, any communications with the property owner about the nature of the gathering, and any communications after the shooting. Those records are held by the host, the platform, the social media companies, and the cell-phone carriers. They are obtainable through a preservation letter and, where necessary, a court order. They are also the records most likely to be deleted first.
The “Open Door” Records
The night of the shooting, the home’s front door was open and the gathering was open to whoever showed up. The “open door” status is itself evidence. It means the host did not run a guest list, did not check IDs, did not screen for weapons, and did not control who entered. A jury can be asked to draw inferences from the absence of any of those controls. The records that document that absence — or its opposite, if the host claims there was a guest list — are part of the host’s communications, the host’s calendar, the platform’s records, and the law enforcement’s witness statements.
Federal authorities classified the Orinda property listing as a short-term-rental, governed by the platform’s own “no-party” and “mansion-party” policies in force at the time, and as a residential property being used for a commercial-scale gathering in a single-family residential zone.
The evidence window is short. Counsel files preservation demands to the platform, the host, the property owner, the identified social media companies, the cell phone carriers, the local law enforcement, and the FBI within days of being retained. The longer the family waits, the more of the record is gone before counsel ever sees it.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook and the Counters
Once a civil case is filed, the insurance companies that insure the property owner, the host, and the platform each send an adjuster. The adjuster’s job is to resolve the case for as little as possible, as quickly as possible. Here is what they will do, in the order they will do it, and what we do in response.
Play 1: “It’s the Criminals’ Fault, Not Our Client’s“
The adjuster will say the shooters were the cause of the harm, and that the property owner, the host, and the platform had nothing to do with it. That argument is half right and half wrong, and the half that is wrong is the half that pays the case. Under California’s comparative-fault regime, the shooters are liable, but so is everyone whose negligence contributed to the harm. The platform’s “no-party” policy was not enforced. The host did not screen the guests. The property owner did not provide security. None of that had to be the only cause. It had to be a substantial factor. We respond with the booking records, the social-media advertisements, the host’s communications, and the platform’s own statements about the “no-party” policy. The point is not to erase the shooters’ liability. The point is to bring our clients into the case alongside the shooters, so that the people who profited from the night are part of the answer.
Play 2: “We Are Very Sorry for Your Loss”
The adjuster will express sympathy and offer an early settlement. The number will look reasonable next to the grief, and it will be a fraction of the case’s value. An early settlement is almost always wrong in a case of this size. The medical and counseling records are still being collected. The vocational and economic-loss analysis is not yet done. The criminal investigation has generated evidence that the family has not yet seen. We respond by telling the family, in writing, that we do not recommend settling until the evidence is fully developed. The case is not ready to settle in the first 90 days. It is ready to settle only after the full damages model is built and the insurance policy limits are confirmed.
Play 3: “Tell Us Everything and We Will See What We Can Do”
The adjuster will ask for a recorded statement. The recorded statement is built to be quoted back to the family. It will contain phrases that the adjuster can use to minimize the damages (“she was doing better,” “he was at the party voluntarily,” “we were all having a good time”). The family should never give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurance company without counsel. We respond by telling the family to refer all communications to us, and by conducting our own recorded interview of the family on our own terms, with the family’s own counsel present.
Play 4: “We Need an Independent Medical Examination”
The adjuster will ask the family member to submit to an “independent medical examination” by a doctor chosen by the insurance company. The doctor is not independent. The doctor is selected because the doctor generates reports that help the insurance company. The family is not required to submit. We respond by telling the family that any medical examination will be done by their own treating physicians, and that we will not authorize an examination by a defense-selected doctor.
Play 5: “Policy Limits Are the Cap”
The adjuster will say the policy limit is the maximum recovery, and that the family should accept the policy limit. The policy limit is not always the maximum recovery. The platform, the property owner, and the host each carry their own insurance, and the family may be able to stack the policies. The platform may carry commercial general liability coverage far above the typical homeowner’s policy. The property owner may have a primary homeowner’s policy, an excess umbrella policy, and additional coverage through the short-term-rental program. The stacking analysis is one of the first things we do once the family decides to move forward. We respond by demanding the full declarations pages and the full insurance tower from every defendant, and by analyzing the available coverage in writing.
We have written about each of these plays in more detail on the what not to say to an insurance adjuster page on our site, and we will walk the family through each one as it comes up. Our insurance claim practice group runs the coverage analysis as a separate workstream from the liability work, because the two analyses do not always move at the same pace.
The Damages: What a Case Like This Is Worth in California
A case arising from a mass shooting at a residential short-term rental has several layers of damages, and a complete damages model has to walk through each one.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are the objectively calculable money losses: the medical and counseling expenses the family has already incurred, the medical and counseling expenses the family will incur in the future, the funeral and burial expenses, the lost wages and benefits the deceased would have earned, the lost household services the deceased would have provided, and the loss of the deceased’s financial guidance, training, and education. California courts require the economic damages to be supported by expert testimony — a forensic economist for the lost-earnings analysis, a life-care planner for the future medical and counseling expenses, and a vocational expert for the lost earning capacity. For a young adult who was killed, the lost-earnings analysis can run into seven figures over a working lifetime. For a family member who survived with injuries, the medical and counseling expenses can run into the high six figures over a lifetime, depending on the injuries.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are the human losses: the pain, suffering, and disfigurement the deceased experienced between the moment of injury and the moment of death (the survival claim), the grief and sorrow of the heirs (the wrongful-death claim), and the loss of companionship, affection, and consortium that the heirs will experience over a lifetime. There is no California statutory cap on non-economic damages in a case of this kind — the cap on non-economic damages in California is limited to medical-malpractice cases, not to general negligence or wrongful-death cases. Juries in Contra Costa County have returned substantial non-economic verdicts in cases of catastrophic loss.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are available in California where the plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. Malice in this context means conduct that is intended to cause injury, or that is despicable and carried on with a conscious disregard of the rights or safety of others. A platform that had a written “no-party” policy and did not enforce it for a property on a residential street, on Halloween night, advertised as a “mansion party” on social media, is the kind of conduct a jury can find despicable and consciously disregarding. The property owner who took the booking and did not provide any security, in a neighborhood that was not designed to absorb a commercial-scale gathering, is the same. The host who advertised the event as a “mansion party” and did not screen the guests, did not check IDs, and did not limit access is the same. A punitive-damages claim is not a guarantee, but it is a real exposure in this case, and it is the kind of exposure that moves the case from a routine settlement to a meaningful one.
The Damages Model We Build
The full damages model has three components: the economic-loss model (built by a forensic economist and a life-care planner), the non-economic model (built by the family and presented through testimony), and the punitive-damages model (built on the platform’s and the host’s conduct, and supported by the published standards, the internal communications, and the pattern of similar incidents). The three components are presented to the insurance company in a single demand letter, and they are the basis for the negotiation that follows.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Statute of Limitations and the Discovery Rule
The statute of limitations in California for a wrongful-death action is two years from the date of death, under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. The statute of limitations for a survival action is the same. The October 31, 2019 shooting means that the families had until October 31, 2021 to file a civil action, in the ordinary course.
California recognizes a discovery rule for cases where the injury was not knowable at the time of death. The discovery rule is narrow. It applies where the defendant concealed the facts of the injury, or where the injury was inherently difficult to detect. A gunshot wound is not hidden. The discovery rule is not, in this case, a meaningful exception to the two-year clock.
We do not make promises about the statute of limitations in a published piece. The two-year clock is the rule, and any exception is case-specific. If your family is reading this within two years of October 31, 2019, do not wait. If your family is reading this after that date, the analysis is more complicated, and you need to talk to us. We do not run a “free consultation” to tell you that you are too late. We run a free consultation to find out whether you are not.
What the DA’s Declination Does and Does Not Mean for Your Civil Case
The DA’s declination of criminal charges tells us the following:
- The criminal investigation did not generate enough admissible evidence to support murder charges against the five arrested men, to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The DA’s office said the case was “very complex” and that “everything’s on the table” depending on what the evidence showed.
- The DA’s office was not part of the multi-agency investigative team that ran the case.
- The Sheriff’s Office said it “stands by our investigation.”
What the declination does not tell us:
- Whether the shooters were actually the people who fired the guns.
- Whether the shooters were acting in self-defense.
- Whether the platform, the property owner, or the host were negligent.
- Whether the family has a civil case.
- Whether the case has settlement value.
The civil case and the criminal case are two different fights, on two different burdens of proof, in two different courtrooms, run by two different teams of lawyers. The DA’s declination is information. It is not a verdict on the civil case.
The Defendants You Can Sue and the Order You Sue Them In
The civil case names the people who profited from the night and who had the power to prevent it. In a case of this kind, the typical sequence is:
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The host — the person or entity that listed the home on the platform, accepted the booking, took the money from the guests, and ran the event. The host is the closest defendant to the harm and is typically the first defendant sued. The host’s homeowner’s policy may or may not cover short-term-rental activity; the answer depends on the specific policy language, and we pull the language in the first thirty days.
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The property owner — the legal owner of the Lucille Way home. If the property owner is different from the host (which is often the case in short-term-rental properties, where the owner lives elsewhere and a local manager runs the listing), the property owner is sued in addition to the host, on a negligent-security theory that runs to the owner of the property independently of the host’s conduct.
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The platform — the booking platform that connected the host to the guests, collected a commission, and held itself out as a “verified” and “safe” marketplace. The platform is sued on a negligent-representation, negligent-entrustment, and premises-liability theory, with the platform’s own “no-party” policy as part of the factual record.
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The local property-management company — if the property was managed by a third-party manager, the manager is a potential additional defendant, on a negligent-management theory.
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The security company, if any — if the host or the property owner hired a security company for the event, the security company is a potential additional defendant, and the case against the security company is the inverse of the case against the property owner: the security company is liable for what it did, and it is also liable for what it failed to do.
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The shooters — the criminal suspects are typically not named as defendants in the civil case, because they are unlikely to have collectible judgment assets. If, however, the shooters have assets, they are sued in addition. The civil case against the shooters is a separate fight.
The order of the defendants is a strategic decision, not a mechanical one. We typically file against the host and the property owner first, because they are the closest to the harm and their insurance is the most accessible. We add the platform second, after the booking records are produced. We add the property-management company and the security company as the discovery develops. We add the shooters last, only if there is a strategic reason to do so.
The Investigation We Run Before Filing Suit
We do not file a case until we have built the evidentiary record. In a case arising from the Orinda shooting, the pre-filing investigation includes:
- Pulling the booking and reservation records from the platform through a preservation letter and, if necessary, a subpoena.
- Pulling the City of Orinda short-term-rental permit and the property’s tax filings.
- Pulling the host’s communications from the platform, from the social media companies, and from the cell-phone carriers.
- Pulling the law-enforcement file through a CPRA request and, if necessary, a subpoena duces tecum.
- Pulling the neighbors’ exterior-camera footage through a preservation letter, with the cooperation of the neighbors.
- Interviewing the witnesses, the surviving victims, the families of the deceased, and the responding officers.
- Engaging a forensic economist to model the lost earnings, the lost household services, and the financial guidance losses.
- Engaging a life-care planner to model the future medical and counseling expenses for the surviving victims.
- Engaging a premises-security expert to opine on the foreseeability of the harm and the standard of care that applied.
- Engaging a use-and-custom expert to opene on the platform’s own policies and the platform’s own internal enforcement, in the industry.
The pre-filing investigation is the most labor-intensive part of the case. It is also the part that determines whether the case settles and for how much. The defense’s adjuster does not negotiate against a complaint; the adjuster negotiates against the evidence. We build the evidence first.
The Negotiation and the Trial
Once the complaint is filed, the defendants’ insurance companies assign counsel. The counsel is typically a defense firm that handles premises-liability, negligent-security, or short-term-rental cases for a living. The defense firm will:
- File an answer that denies most of the allegations.
- Issue discovery requests to the family, to the responding officers, to the witnesses, to the treating physicians, and to the experts.
- Depose the family members, the surviving victims, and the witnesses.
- Retain its own experts: a forensic economist, a life-care planner, a security expert, and a use-and-custom expert.
- File summary-judgment motions arguing that the harm was not foreseeable, that the host and the property owner did not have a duty to the guests, that the platform is immune from liability, or that the criminal shooters were the sole cause.
- Move to exclude the family’s experts under Sargon (Daubert-equivalent) and the analogous California evidentiary rules.
- Engage in mediation or a settlement conference before trial.
The family is not in this alone. We handle the discovery responses, the depositions, the expert reports, the summary-judgment opposition, the mediation, and the trial. The family’s job is to live the case and to be the face of the case to the jury. Our job is to be the legal and the technical engine. The two jobs do not overlap, and we do not put the family in a position where they have to be lawyers as well as grievers.
Why Our Firm
Attorney911 is the operating name of The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes commercial-vehicle, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases in California, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. The two lawyers who work the case are:
Ralph P. Manginello — Managing Partner. Texas Bar #24007597, admitted in 1998, with 27+ years of courtroom practice including federal court. He is a graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston and the University of Texas at Austin. Before law school he was a journalist, and the discipline of asking questions and verifying sources is the same discipline he brings to a case file. He is rated “Excellent” (8.2) on Avvo with a 5.0 client-review score, a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He is a Million Dollar Member of the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association and a member of the National Association of Italian Lawyers. He has been doing this work since the late 1990s, and the cases he remembers most are the ones that took the longest to get right.
Lupe Peña — Associate Attorney. Texas Bar #24084332, admitted in 2012, with 13+ years of practice. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He is a former insurance-defense attorney — a former colleague of the people we are suing — and he knows how the reserve is set, how the recorded-statement trap is set, how the IME-doctor selection is set, and how the delay tactic is set, because he set those traps himself. He now uses that knowledge for the people on the other side. He is a graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston and Saint Mary’s University, San Antonio, with a B.B.A. in International Business. His background as a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch is part of the reason he understands working families.
We handle catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases on a contingency basis: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. The family does not pay a fee unless we win. We do not get paid unless you do. The case is on us until the case is over.
What You Can Do This Week
If your family lost a loved one at the Lucille Way home on October 31, 2019, or if a family member was wounded, the next seven days matter.
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Do not delete anything. Do not delete the social media posts. Do not delete the photographs. Do not delete the text messages. Do not delete the voicemails. The defense will ask the jury to draw an adverse inference from anything that was deleted after the family talked to a lawyer. The fix is simple: do not delete.
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Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. The insurance adjuster will call. The platform’s investigator will call. The property owner’s lawyer will call. Refer all of them to us, and we will handle the call.
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Pull the booking and payment records now. If anyone in the family booked the home, the credit-card statement and the platform confirmation email are the spine of the case. Save the records in two places (cloud and a separate drive) and tell us where to find them.
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Write down the names of every witness. Every guest who was there, every neighbor who saw the cars, every responding officer, every medic, every family member who got the call. The witnesses are the case. The longer the family waits, the more the witnesses move and the more their memories fade.
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Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The call is confidential. The call is not a commitment to file suit. It is a conversation about what your options are and what the next seven days should look like.
The statute of limitations in California for a wrongful-death action is two years from the date of death, under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1, with limited discovery-rule exceptions. The two-year clock from October 31, 2019 ran, in the ordinary course, on October 31, 2021. We do not make promises about the limitations clock in a published piece. We do, however, talk to families about the clock on the first call.
The Dangers of Waiting
Every week that passes is a week in which:
- Surveillance footage is overwritten.
- Witnesses move.
- Memories fade.
- Insurance adjusters interview other witnesses first.
- The host deletes his social media.
- The platform purges its booking records under routine data lifecycle.
- The defense’s experts get to the witnesses before we do.
We have written about the evidence window in premises-liability and wrongful-death cases in our parents’ guide to child injury lawsuits page, and the same principles apply to a case arising from a mass shooting. The earlier we get into the file, the more of the file we save. The later we get in, the more of the file is gone.
How the Case Gets Paid
A case arising from the Orinda shooting is paid out of one or more insurance policies, and the analysis of the insurance tower is the single most important financial step in the case. The host may carry a homeowner’s policy that excludes short-term-rental activity, and the question of whether the homeowner’s policy applies is a coverage fight that we run alongside the liability fight. The property owner may carry a separate homeowner’s policy, an excess umbrella policy, and additional coverage through the short-term-rental program. The platform carries commercial general liability coverage that runs well above the typical homeowner’s limit. Each policy is a separate coverage fight, and each coverage fight is run in parallel with the liability work.
We do not give up on a coverage fight just because the insurance company denies the claim. California law (Insurance Code § 790.03, the Unfair Insurance Practices Act) gives the family a private right of action against an insurance company that handles a claim in bad faith. The standard is not that the company has to pay every claim; the standard is that the company has to handle the claim fairly. When the company denies coverage without a reasonable basis, the denial itself is a separate cause of action.
We have written more about how coverage fights work in our wrongful death and insurance claim practice areas, and we walk the family through the coverage map on the first call.
The Defendants’ Standard Tactics in a Case Like This
Each defendant in the case has a playbook that is tuned to the venue and to the defendant. The platform’s playbook is the most sophisticated, because the platform has faced these cases before. The platform will:
- Argue that it is a “platform” and not a “hotel” or a “host,” and that the platform is not the operator of the property.
- Argue that the platform’s “no-party” policy was in effect, and that the platform is therefore not responsible for the host’s violation of the policy.
- Argue that the criminal shooters were the sole cause of the harm.
- Move to dismiss on First Amendment grounds if the case is pleaded as a content-based claim, and to compel arbitration if the platform’s terms of service include an arbitration clause.
The host’s playbook is more straightforward:
- Argue that the host did not know the gathering was going to escalate.
- Argue that the criminal shooters were the sole cause.
- Move to limit the insurance coverage to the host’s homeowner’s policy, and to argue that the short-term-rental exclusion bars coverage.
The property owner’s playbook is the simplest:
- Argue that the property owner had no knowledge of the gathering and no duty to the guests beyond the duty owed by the host.
- Argue that the criminal shooters were the sole cause.
We have seen these playbooks in case after case. The counter to each is the same: build the evidence, develop the expert testimony, file the case in the right venue, and try the case in front of a Contra Costa County jury if the defense will not settle for the value of the harm.
Why Local Knowledge Matters
A case arising from a mass shooting at a short-term rental in Orinda is a Contra Costa County case. The jury is a Contra Costa County jury. The judge is a Contra Costa County judge. The courthouse is the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez, or the Richard E. Arnason Justice Center in Richmond, depending on the case type. The local rules, the local procedures, the local counsel, the local experts, and the local court staff are all part of the case.
We work with local counsel on California cases. We do not pretend to be a California firm. We bring the trial work, the damages model, and the case strategy. Local counsel brings the California procedural knowledge, the local-rules familiarity, the California-bar admission, and the local jury sense. The two of us together bring a case that is built to win in Contra Costa County.
What We Will Not Tell You
We will not tell you that you have a case until we have the evidence. We will not tell you that the case is worth a specific number until we have the damages model. We will not tell you that the criminal case and the civil case are the same case. We will not tell you that the DA’s declination ends the conversation. We will not tell you that an early settlement offer is the right answer. We will not tell you that you are too late until we have looked at the dates and the discovery rule.
We will tell you what we know, and what we do not know, in writing. We will tell you when the evidence is strong and when it is weak. We will tell you when the defense is bluffing and when it is not. We will tell you when the case is ready to settle and when it is not.
Frequently Asked Questions
My son was killed at the Lucille Way home. The DA declined criminal charges. Does that mean I have no case?
No. The criminal case and the civil case are two different cases. The DA had to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury. The civil case against the platform, the property owner, and the host only has to prove that their negligence was a substantial factor in bringing the harm to your family, by a preponderance of the evidence. The criminal declination is information, not a verdict. The civil case can move forward, subject to the statute of limitations. We will look at the dates with you on the first call.
What is the statute of limitations for a wrongful-death case arising from the Orinda shooting?
In California, the statute of limitations for a wrongful-death action is two years from the date of death, under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. The shooting occurred on October 31, 2019. The two-year clock ran, in the ordinary course, on October 31, 2021. California recognizes a narrow discovery rule for cases where the injury was not knowable at the time of death, but the discovery rule is not a meaningful exception in a case of this kind. We will not make a promise in this page. We will, however, give you an honest answer on the first call.
Who can be sued for the Orinda shooting?
The host that listed the home on the booking platform, the property owner of the Lucille Way home, the booking platform itself, the local property-management company (if any), the security company (if any), and the criminal shooters (if they have collectible assets). The order in which the defendants are sued is a strategic decision we make with the family, based on the insurance coverage and the strength of the evidence against each defendant.
Can I sue Airbnb, even though the shooters were not Airbnb employees?
Yes. The platform is not being sued for what the shooters did. The platform is being sued for what the platform did or did not do, in enforcing its own “no-party” policy, in verifying the listing, and in holding the platform out to the public as a safe marketplace. A platform that collects a commission on a booking and represents to the public that the property is “verified” has a duty of reasonable care under California law. That duty runs alongside the host’s duty and the property owner’s duty, and it is independent of the shooters’ acts.
What evidence do I need to preserve, and how fast does it disappear?
The booking and reservation records (held by the platform), the social media trail (held by the platform and the social media companies), the surveillance footage from the home and from the neighbors (held on cloud cameras that typically retain 30 days, sometimes as little as 7), the law-enforcement file (held by the Sheriff’s Office and the FBI), the host’s communications (held by the host, the platform, and the cell-phone carriers), and the witnesses’ memories (which fade with time). The evidence window is short. We send preservation letters within days of being retained.
I gave a recorded statement to an insurance adjuster before I called a lawyer. Is that a problem?
It can be. A recorded statement taken by the other side’s adjuster is built to be quoted back to the family in a way that minimizes the damages. The family member may have said things that the adjuster can use (“she was doing better,” “we were having a good time,” “the neighborhood is quiet, it was a one-time event”). The fix is to call us, give us a copy of the recorded statement, and let us build the rest of the case around it. We have written more about the recorded-statement trap on our what not to say to an insurance adjuster page.
What is my wrongful-death case worth in California?
A case arising from the Orinda shooting has three layers of damages: economic (lost earnings, lost household services, medical and counseling expenses, funeral expenses), non-economic (the grief, sorrow, and loss of companionship of the heirs, and the pain and suffering of the deceased between injury and death), and punitive (the platform’s and the host’s conscious disregard of the risks of a “mansion party” on a residential street on Halloween night). The economic layer is built by a forensic economist and a life-care planner. The non-economic layer is built by the family and presented through testimony. The punitive layer is built on the platform’s and the host’s conduct. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We do not give dollar figures in a published piece. We build the damages model first, and we give the family the range on the first call.
How long does a wrongful-death case take in California?
A typical case takes 18 to 36 months from filing to resolution, depending on the venue, the evidence, and the insurance coverage. A case that goes to trial can take 24 to 48 months. A case that settles early, with the right insurance coverage, can resolve in 12 to 18 months. The case moves at the speed of the evidence: the earlier the evidence is built, the earlier the case resolves.
How do I pay for a wrongful-death case?
Contingency. 33.33% of the recovery before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. The family does not pay a fee unless we win. The case costs (filing fees, deposition costs, expert fees, mediation costs) are advanced by the firm and reimbursed out of the recovery at the end. We have written more about contingency fees and how they work on our contingency fees explained page.
I am not sure I want to sue. Can I just talk to someone first?
Yes. The first call is free. The first call is confidential. The first call is not a commitment to file suit. It is a conversation about your options, the statute of limitations, the evidence, and the next step. We will tell you, on the first call, whether we think you have a case. We will also tell you, on the first call, if we do not think you have a case, or if we think the case belongs with a different firm. We are not the right firm for every case. We are the right firm for this kind of case.
What is the difference between a wrongful-death claim and a survival claim?
The wrongful-death claim is brought by the heirs of the deceased (the spouse, the children, the parents, the siblings, depending on the family structure) for the heirs’ own losses. The survival claim is brought by the personal representative of the deceased’s estate, for the deceased’s own losses (the pain, suffering, and disfigurement between injury and death, the medical and funeral expenses, and the punitive damages the deceased would have been entitled to). The two claims run together, and we file them together, but they are separate causes of action with separate damages and separate damages caps.
Do I have to go to court?
Most wrongful-death cases settle before trial. The settlement is negotiated against the insurance coverage, the evidence, and the venue. The defense prefers to settle, because the alternative is a jury trial in front of a Contra Costa County jury. The family does not have to go to court if the case settles. The family does have to be available for depositions, for the defense’s medical examination (which we will resist), and for the trial if the case does not settle. The case moves at the family’s pace, not the defense’s pace.
Will I have to talk to the defense lawyer?
The defense lawyer will almost certainly ask to depose the family members. The deposition is conducted under oath, with a court reporter, with the family’s own counsel present. The family’s own counsel will prepare the family for the deposition, will be present during the deposition, and will object to improper questions. The deposition is not an interrogation. It is a question-and-answer session under oath, and it is the defense’s opportunity to test the family’s testimony. We have done this work many times. We will be sitting next to the family the entire time.
What is the first step?
The first step is the call. 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The call is confidential. The call is with a person who has done this work for a long time, and who will tell you, in plain language, what your options are.
What Happens on the First Call
When you call 1-888-ATTY-911, a person will answer. We do not use a call center. We do not use an answering service. We use a live person, on our own team, who has been doing this work for a long time. We will ask you a small number of questions: who was lost, who was wounded, when the night happened, whether anyone in the family has already given a statement to an insurance company, and whether the family has already been contacted by the platform or the property owner’s insurance company. We will then schedule a longer conversation with Ralph Manginello or Lupe Peña, whichever is the better fit for the case.
The longer conversation is the consultation. The consultation is free. The consultation is confidential. The consultation is where we go through the evidence, the defendants, the statute of limitations, the insurance coverage, and the next seven days. We will give you a written summary of the consultation, in plain language, that you can take to your family.
If we agree to work together, the agreement is a contingency-fee agreement. You do not pay a fee unless we win. The case costs are advanced by the firm. The agreement is in writing. You can take it to another lawyer to review if you want to. We do not pressure you to sign on the first call. We pressure you to make an informed decision.
What We Will Do for You
We will:
- Pull the booking and reservation records from the platform through a preservation letter and, if necessary, a subpoena.
- Pull the law-enforcement file through a CPRA request and, if necessary, a subpoena duces tecum.
- Pull the social media records from the platform and the social media companies.
- Pull the surveillance footage from the home and from the neighbors.
- Interview the witnesses, the surviving victims, the responding officers, and the family.
- Engage a forensic economist to model the lost earnings, the lost household services, and the financial guidance losses.
- Engage a life-care planner to model the future medical and counseling expenses for the surviving victims.
- Engage a premises-security expert to opine on the foreseeability of the harm and the standard of care that applied.
- Engage a use-and-custom expert to opine on the platform’s own policies and the platform’s own internal enforcement.
- File the complaint in the right venue, against the right defendants, in the right causes of action.
- Take the depositions, respond to the discovery, oppose the summary-judgment motions, and try the case in front of a Contra Costa County jury if the defense will not settle for the value of the harm.
- Resolve the case, whether by settlement or by verdict, and distribute the recovery to the family.
We will do this work on a contingency basis. We will not ask the family for a fee unless we win. We will not ask the family to pay the case costs out of pocket. The case is on us until the case is over.
The Calm That Comes From Knowing the Work Is Being Done
We have written this page because we know that the people who lost someone at the Lucille Way home on October 31, 2019 are still living with the loss, and the DA’s declination has reopened the wound. The system has moved on. The insurance adjusters have not called. The platform’s investigators have not called. The property owner’s lawyer has not called. The case feels closed, because nobody has told the family that the case is still open.
The case is still open. The evidence is still preservable. The platform, the property owner, and the host each have insurance, and each of those insurance policies is a separate source of recovery. The family has a wrongful-death claim, a survival claim, and a punitive-damages claim, in California, in 2025 and beyond. The work is real. The work is doable. The work is on us.
We are Attorney911. We are the Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases in California. We work with local counsel in Contra Costa County and we are admitted pro hac vice where required. We have the trial experience, the damages-model infrastructure, and the insurance-coverage analysis that this kind of case requires.
Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The call is confidential. The call is the first step.
“An action for wrongful death may be brought by the heirs of the decedent, or, if none, by those entitled by law to succeed to the property of the decedent.” — California Code of Civil Procedure § 377.20.
We will be sitting next to the family the entire time. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win. Free consultation. 1-888-ATTY-911. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
We have built the rest of our practice around the same kind of work we do for families like yours. If you want to see how we handle the insurance fight, read more on our insurance claim page. If you want to see how we build a wrongful-death case from the first call to the verdict, read more on our wrongful death page. If you want to see the lawyers who will be working the case, read more about Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña.
We are ready when you are.