An interesting disclaimer

We attended an auction and dinner for our youngest son's school on Friday at the Renaissance Hotel in Agoura Hills. It was a very pleasant evening and I had my camera with me for a change, thinking I might actually get around to taking some pictures inside. Didn't happen.

I got some nice shots of what was a relatively typical spring evening for this part of Southern California. The green lower level vegetation with the browning of the hillsides is particularly common, but with all the rain this year we still have a lot of green in places that last year were already scorched.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my mundane shots of SoCal, even if I like them. What caught my attention later in the evening as I was dragging out a bit of our booty was a sign in the parking lot (I looked around and found several of them) with an interesting disclaimer (my apologies for the fact that I still don't seem to be able to shoot vertical when I want to — being in a hurry is no excuse):

THE HOTEL IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO VEHICLES, EQUIP- MENT OR CONTENTS. PLEASE REMOVE ALL LAPTOPS AND VALUABLES FROM VEHICLE.

Was there some sort of massive crime outbreak in Agoura Hills that I missed? Is the Marriott chain putting up these disclaimers all over in the hope that they'll fend off some law suits? Or is this some weird local phenomena?

The whole thing just struck me as being very odd and given the location, quite unexpected and out of place.