In this week’s episode, the Bad Batch travels to a remote planet to secure a valuable mineral resource. Wrecker is charged with keeping watch for poachers while the rest of the crew is occupied with the delicate extraction of the volatile substance. However, a mysterious thief steals the clones’ ship, the Marauder, from under Wrecker’s nose, and fingers immediately start pointing.
Other than having to endure Tech’s blistering blame game, does Wrecker bear any legal responsibility to the other clones for the loss of the Marauder on his watch?
First, Tech has previously referred to the Marauder as “my ship” in Cornered, Season 1, Episode 4. Although Wrecker’s reaction in that episode strongly suggested that the Marauder was not actually Tech’s personal property, Tech might first argue that the Marauder belonged exclusively to him as its primary mechanic. Thus, Tech could try to characterize Wrecker’s failure to prevent the Marauder’s theft as a matter of contract.
Entrusting someone else with personal property creates a bailment contract between the owner and the bailee. These facts sound like the kind of bailment that exists between a car owner and the operator of a parking lot or garage. Usually, this kind of bailment is a bailment for hire where the arrangement benefits both parties, which means that the bailee has a duty of ordinary care to protect the value of the property. Beetson v. Hollywood Athletic Club, 109 Cal. App. 715, 718 (1930). Framing it as a bailment, Tech could argue that Wrecker’s failure to prevent the Marauder’s theft was sufficiently negligent to breach Wrecker’s duty of care as a bailee of the Marauder.
However, a more likely way of characterizing Wrecker’s potential liability would be as one of the vessel’s co-owners. Under California law, the clones’ co-ownership of a vessel like the Marauder would amount to a tenancy in common. Ferem v. Olson & Mahony, 176 Cal. 652, 655 (1917). Common tenancy creates a fiduciary relationship between the co-owners where each owner has a duty to preserve the value of the shared interest in the property.
Specifically, each owner may be entitled to recovery if another owner’s conduct amounts to “waste” of the property, which is defined as “an unlawful act or omission of duty on the part of a tenant which results in permanent injury.” Avalon Pac.-Santa Ana, L.P. v. HD Supply Repair & Remodel, LLC, 192 Cal. App. 4th 1183, 1214 (2011). Under California Code of Civil Procedure § 732, a party may sue for treble damages from a co-tenant whose conduct amounts to waste of the property. To recover these hefty damages, Tech, Hunter, and Omega could argue that Wrecker’s failure to adequately monitor the vessel when it was parked in a known high-crime area was an omission that resulted in the unlawful waste of the Marauder.
However, Wrecker himself asserted a strong defense to any breach-of-duty theory in the episode: because of a lack of “suitable landing zones,” Tech had docked the Marauder out of view from Wrecker’s watch post at the entrance of the mine. Wrecker could make a compelling argument that he could not be in two places at once, and protecting the clones’ safety superseded his duty to protect the Marauder.
And after all, while the value of the Marauder is certainly immense to the Bad Batch, Wrecker himself potentially suffered the greatest property loss of any of the clones with the ship’s theft: Lula.
Under these tragic circumstances, burdening Wrecker with liability for the Marauder’s loss would be like kicking a clone while he’s down.
