View more from News & Articles or Primerus Weekly

By John Dahlberg, Esq.
Dillingham & Murphy, LLP
San Francisco, California

Grocers, shopping centers and big box retailers are besieged every day by various sorts of trespassers who claim to have a legal right to collect money and signatures from customers. Petition circulators make money for each customer signature they can gather.  Dubious charity groups seek donations in the same places.  They all station themselves at store entrances. They rely on one case that has never applied to their activities in front of grocery or big box stores.

In 1979, a divided California Supreme Court held in the “Pruneyard” case that those who own or maintain large regional shopping centers must allow “a few orderly persons” to engage in expressive activity in a central courtyard space because the center invited the general public to congregate there, and it had displaced the traditional city downtown arena for speech.  The billion dollar petition and campaign management industry immediately decided that the “Pruneyard” right must also apply to large grocery stores, even though they are rarely if ever found in large shopping centers. No court has agreed with the industry, and in 2012, the California Supreme Court held that the “Pruneyard” right to engage in expressive activity at a mall does not extend to large, typically configured grocery stores. Ralphs Grocery Company v. UFCW Local 8, 55 Cal. 4th 1083, 1091-1093.

Persistent trespass by the homeless is a difficult problem to eradicate.  It is also associated with theft, vandalism, unwanted and annoying begging from customers, and public intoxication and disorderliness.  Those who maintain shopping centers and tenant stores should collaborate to maintain parking lots and common areas without garbage or graffiti, and with bright lights. Collaboration with police command staff usually pays benefits as well.  Property owners and managers, as well as tenants, can also seek restraining orders against those persons who threaten violence or create health hazards.

John Dahlberg, of Dillingham Murphy. LLC is a former police officer who helps national, regional and local clients manage these issues every day.