$900,000 Settlement for Boy in Coma OKd : Lawsuits: The child was injured after climbing a fence and being swept down a flood channel. The county will provide funds for past and future medical expenses.

A $900,000 settlement was approved by a county board Monday for an 11-year-old boy who has been comatose since February, 1985, when he climbed a fence at the San Fernando Swap Meet and was swept down a flood-control channel.

In a unanimous decision, the three-person Los Angeles County Claims Board conceded that, although the county made various repairs to the fences along the Pacoima Wash, dirt and debris left stacked near a fence at the swap meet made it easy to scale.

“It’s a very tragic thing,” said Louis V. Aguilar, principal deputy county counsel.

The insurer for swap meet owner William Hannon also recently agreed to pay $1 million toward the cost of German Gonzales’ 24-hour care, bringing the total settlement to $1.9 million, said the Gonzales family’s attorney, Louis E. DeWitt.

Doctors have told Perfecto and Maria Gonzales of South El Monte that there is no chance their son will recover, DeWitt said. The family could not be reached for comment on Monday, but DeWitt said German was taken off a respirator about two weeks after the accident.

“They expected him to die immediately, as they were told by the doctors,” DeWitt said. “They really said goodby . . . but he just kept on.”

The amount of the settlement was determined based on an estimate of what it will cost to care for German for the rest of his life, which doctors estimate could last from seven to 35 years.

German has been cared for at Fairview State Hospital in Costa Mesa since shortly after the accident. Past medical expenses were estimated by the county at $500,000, and it costs an additional $7,000 per month for his standard care and occasional acute care for respiratory distress and infections.

The outdoor swap meet, located at 585 Glenoaks Blvd. in San Fernando, caters primarily to the northeast San Fernando Valley’s large Latino population, selling everything from produce to clothes.

The Gonzaleses had a booth selling fabric at the swap meet on Feb. 12, 1985, the day the boy was injured. DeWitt said they continue to make their living by frequenting various Los Angeles-area markets.

While playing with a group of other children, the boy apparently climbed over the fence in a location where people had routinely sneaked into the swap meet, DeWitt said.

In a description of the event recounted by Aguilar in his recommendation to the Claims Board, German slipped into the water at the base of the concrete-sided ditch, where shallow water was running rapidly at about 15 m.p.h. Rescuers found him within 10 minutes about two miles downstream, already comatose.

The family originally sued for several million dollars in damages for their pain and suffering and for the boy’s loss of earning capacity. The trial was postponed several times because of court backlogs, attorneys said.

DeWitt said that, in the end, he encouraged the family to accept the lesser amount because questions of parental negligence had been raised in a countersuit filed by Hannon’s insurer, represented by attorney Jeffrey E. Zinder. Zinder declined comment on the case beyond acknowledging that the insurer had settled with the family earlier this month.

“There were some problems with the case,” DeWitt said. “The child was only 5 years old, and he was apparently left alone for about a half hour before the accident with no explanation.”

The settlement must be approved by the county Board of Supervisors and a Superior Court judge before it is final, but Aguilar said both of these steps are relatively routine.

DeWitt said that, once approved, the $1.9-million settlement will be invested in annuities so that interest gains will match rising future hospital costs.