Bergeson Tries Again to Limit Suits Against Cities in Beach-Injury Cases

Despite the defeat of two earlier bills, Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) introduced new legislation Monday to limit large lawsuits for injuries resulting from “natural conditions” at public beaches and other recreational areas.

Bergeson said she introduced the measure on the first day of the 1987-88 legislative session to signal “it is one of those issues we won’t let go away.”

Officials of Southern California beach communities, who strongly backed Bergeson’s earlier bills on the issue, say they have been bombarded with lawsuits since the City of Newport Beach was hit with a $6-million verdict in 1984. The verdict stemmed from a lawsuit by a Claremont teen-ager who was paralyzed after diving into shallow water and striking an invisible sand bar.

Top Priority of Cities

Earlier this year, beach city officials said the restoration of governmental immunity that previously shielded them from such lawsuits was their top legislative priority.

But critics have charged that Newport Beach did not post warning signs about the sand bars until after the verdict, although there have been hundreds of similar injuries on beaches in the vicinity in recent years. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing that beach communities have a responsibility to protect the public from known dangers, have voted down attempts by Bergeson to restore the immunity twice--in 1984 and 1985.

The bill introduced by Bergeson on Monday says that “the natural condition itself is the basis of the immunity,” and that “no act or omission of a public entity or public employee shall be considered when applying this immunity.”

Essentially, Bergeson’s bill, like the two earlier ones, would reverse a state appellate court ruling that stripped away the governmental immunity. That ruling declared that the “natural conditions” shield does not apply in areas where improvements have been made and municipal services like police and lifeguards have been provided. The state Supreme Court let the ruling stand in 1982.

The appellate court ruling grew out of a little-noticed lawsuit against the City of San Diego, which stemmed from a 1978 riptide drowning at Black’s Beach, a popular nude bathing spot. But it was the Newport Beach verdict, made possible by that ruling, that triggered scores of other lawsuits up and down the coast.

“In some cases, they (beach cities) are actually settling . . . just to save them the difficulty of going through with the litigation,” Bergeson said.

Bergeson, who has argued that taxpayers should not be held responsible for injuries when beachgoers and others take foolish chances, said the settlements are “certainly a needless expenditure of taxpayer funds.”

Bergeson said she did not know until after she had introduced her bill that a $3-million claim was filed Monday against the city of San Clemente, Orange County and state of California for a diving accident at San Clemente State Beach last summer.

San Clemente--one of the first cities in Southern California to post warning signs regarding pier pilings, submerged rocks, rip currents and other hazards--was one of the few Orange County coastal cities that had not faced similar lawsuits since the 1984 verdict against Newport Beach.