Bill Would Limit Cities’ Liability in Injury Suits

California cities that are reeling from multimillion-dollar injury suits brought against them because they are assumed to have “deep pockets” of wealth would gain new protections under a measure that sailed through the Senate on Thursday.

The bill, by Sen. John Foran (D-San Francisco), would allow courts to levy damage awards against public agencies and individuals only to the extent that each is held to have been responsible for an accident.

The measure, sent to the Assembly on a 29-5 vote, would overturn the law of joint and several liability under which one defendant in a civil suit can be held responsible for paying 100% of a judgment, even though other defendants may also be responsible but are unable to pay.

Cities often become targets of suits because they have jurisdiction over much public property and have taxpayer resources to pay judgments.

“Cities have a gun to their heads,” Foran said. “Is it fair that someone that is 5% at fault should pay 100% of the damages”?

Similar measures have been approved by the Senate three times in the last three years. All were opposed by trial lawyers, whose pay for handling such suits is commonly a share of the damage awards, and were defeated in the Assembly.

A recent highly publicized deep-pockets case occurred in Newport Beach, where a jury ordered the city to pay $6 million to a swimmer who dived into the surf on a city beach and struck his head on a sand bar. The swimmer was held partly responsible for the accident, but a jury determined that the city should pay damages because it failed to post warnings that the sand had shifted.

“The people being gypped out of the money are the taxpayers,” Foran said of such damage awards.

According to the League of California Cities, more than $42 billion in damages have been levied against California cities during the last three years under the deep-pockets concept. The exposure to future suits could exceed $200 billion, the league estimated, and has triggered huge increases in liability insurance rates.

Under the bill, public agencies still could be held liable for actual damages and medical costs, even if they were only marginally at fault. However, in the case of pain and suffering and similar “non-economic” losses--generally the major part of damage awards--payments would be apportioned based on fault.