City, Developers Deny Fault as Time Bomb Ticks : City Won’t Post Signs Despite Parents’ Pleas

The parents of Matthew Smith and Corey Peake say they did not learn that their neighborhood had been built on an abandoned artillery range until after their sons were killed by the explosion of a shell they found while playing in a Tierrasanta canyon four years ago.

Now the parents want the city of San Diego to post signs in Tierrasanta warning of the danger, but the city has refused.

The dispute over signs emerged as a bitter point of contention during negotiations last month to settle a lawsuit brought by the Smith boy’s parents.

‘Totally Outrageous’

Superior Court Judge Dennis Adams, who presided over the case, called the city’s refusal “totally outrageous,” but said he was powerless to do anything about it.

Moreover, the “sign expert” who city officials said had recommended against posting warnings in Tierrasanta does not exist, Adams said in an interview. City officials involved in the case also said they were concerned that signs might hurt property values in the area, Adams said.

Gene Gordon, chief deputy city attorney, said the judge’s statement about the sign expert is “absolutely not true,” and that the city had hired a consultant to study the question of signs at Tierrasanta. However, Gordon and another city official involved in the case gave conflicting accounts of the study and its conclusions and said they could not provide the expert’s name.

Matthew’s parents say they gave up on their demand for signs and agreed to settle the case last month for $1.3 million when they found during the negotiations in Adams’ chambers that the city would not budge on the sign issue. The city’s share of the settlement was $440,000.

“We went as far as we could with them,” said Suzanne Gillick-Pew, Matthew’s mother. She realized, she said, that, even if they went through with a trial and won, neither the jury nor the judge could force the city to warn other parents of the danger.

Patrick Frega, who represented Gillick-Pew and her ex-husband, Robin Smith, said he believes the real reason the city won’t post signs is that to do so would be to admit responsibility.

“We tried to get them to put signs up, but they just wouldn’t do it because that is an admission of liability,” Frega said. “They do not admit or deny liability,” he said, adding that the settlement money represents an attempt by the city to “buy peace.”

Joanne Peake, the mother of the other child who died, had settled earlier, and also was unsuccessful in getting warning signs as part of her settlement. The Peake family’s settlement totaled $5 million, of which $2.06 million will be paid by the city.

Same Legal Liability

Adams said last week that, if another child is injured or killed by an unexploded shell, the city will be in the same legal position.

The issue of the sign expert arose when the judge and the parents asked city officials to explain why they refused to post signs, Adams said.

He said he was told by Gordon and other city officials that an expert had conducted a study and concluded that signs would be “an attractive nuisance” that might provoke children to go hunting for the World War II-era ordnance.

“That didn’t make any sense to me,” Adams said. “There’s no sign telling people to be careful. . .So I asked them for the study and to talk to the expert. Well, there was no expert and there was no study. To this day, I still don’t understand it.”

Gordon said the city’s Risk Management Department had hired a consultant who recommended that signs not be posted, but that the consultant’s report was oral, not written.

The department concluded that posting of signs could actually make the situation worse, Gordon said, because they could attract the attention of curious children. “Sign experts will tell you that signs sometimes will plant an idea in people’s minds to do things they might not otherwise do,” Gordon said.

Gordon said that he never mentioned the question of property values at any of the settlement conferences, but that employees of the risk management department had. “I think some of the risk management people live in Tierrasanta,” he said.

Risk management officials did a study in which “it became apparent that the Tierrasanta residents did not want signs posted,” Gordon said. “If I lived in Tierrasanta, I wouldn’t want signs.”

Passed Inquiries On

Gordon said he was unfamiliar with the details of the study done by the sign expert in the Tierrasanta case and referred questions to Julian Johnson, insurance and claims manager for the risk management department.

“We did hire an outside expert in the area of signing,” Johnson said. However, he could remember neither the man’s name nor the results of his study, he said.

“I don’t recall what the recommendation was--if there was one--or how it was couched, in what terms,” he said, adding, “The adjuster who was handling that case is not here.”

“The community was not in favor of the signing as well,” Johnson added. “We felt that education was probably the key to this, rather than signing the area.”

Johnson said the sign expert the city hired and most people knowledgeable about signs say, “You don’t sign for some of the obvious things and, a lot of times, it’s best to address problems through educational programs.”

Gordon said city officials believe they have made sufficient efforts to alert residents of Tierrasanta to the danger. Each fall, the Fire Department sends representatives to all the schools around Tierrasanta to teach children how to recognize dangerous ordnance and what to do if they find it, he said. Further, an $8.1-million federal cleanup could begin later this year, he said.

The “number one reason” the city does not want to post signs, he said, “is the belief by the city that signs would not add anything over and above what was already being done to alleviate the risk.”

He conceded that there is no formal program to alert adults in the area, but said there has been widespread publicity about the ordnance. “We feel it’s a matter of general knowledge,” Gordon said.