Caltrans Likely to Get Free Pass From Courts on Fatal Error

Even though Caltrans may have contributed to a deadly freeway accident in Anaheim in July, the victim’s family faces an uphill battle if it sues the state, lawyers say.

The reason: state law and some fine print in the permit Caltrans issued that allowed an oversized truck under a low overpass, causing an accident that killed a Westminster motorist.

“There are almost insurmountable [obstacles] to a suit,” said David Baer, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in defending public agencies. “There are two dimensions to fault. One is legal, which I concern myself with. The other is actual.”

That gap between blame and legal liability touches on a national debate, legal scholars say, over whether governments are too quick to make themselves immune to litigation. USC law professor Jody David Armour said it’s unfair that the family of the Orange County accident victim should be denied compensation.

“We would all like to be in the business of declaring ourselves judgment-proof,” Armour said.

The stage was set for the debate when Caltrans approved a permit for Statewide Transport of Utah to route a 15-foot-high truck west on the Riverside Freeway toward the Orange Freeway on July 16.

All trucks over 14 feet high need such a permit. Caltrans workers check the planned routes to ensure that each load can travel safely.

But when the big rig passed under the 14-foot, 10-inch La Palma Avenue overpass, its 7,000-pound cargo was knocked off, crushing a following car driven by Tam Trong Tran, 36, of Westminster. The accident was at least the third Caltrans routing error since June, officials at the agency say.

Caltrans is routinely sued by drivers who blame the transportation agency for accidents. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, Caltrans was named in 224 personal-injury claims that sought $272.5 million.

The state paid $37.2 million in 89 settlements or court-ordered judgments over that time, said Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago.

Claims often are filed against the state agency because suing all parties connected to an accident is common, he said. “What they do normally is name everybody,” Drago said. “We’re the state. The state has deep pockets.”

Protecting those funds, which are really taxpayer dollars, is one reason behind a provision in California’s government code that makes Caltrans immune to liability related to the issuing of permits.

Many public agencies enjoy such protection, said Jack Winters, executive partner of Truck Injury Lawyers, a San Diego law firm that represents plaintiffs in truck accidents. State legislatures provide government agencies with broad immunity to fend off frivolous lawsuits and excessive judgments.

“Governments can only be sued according to their permission,” Winters said.

But there has been ongoing debate nationally about the fairness of these provisions.

“It should strike us as a bit strange and suspicious--we should be a little skeptical about any exercise of government power that in effect protects the government from its own bad judgments and mistakes,” said Armour of USC.

State agencies that are protected from lawsuits would have a stronger incentive to be careful without that immunity, Armour said.

And safeguards, such as a judge’s authority to dismiss suits in the early stages, already exist to stop frivolous or weak claims, Armour added.

“We have to decide which cost we’re more willing to bear--the cost of innocent victims going without compensation or the cost of some frivolous lawsuit being able to get into the system,” he said. “It comes back to the whole debate about whether you think that we have litigation-happy, lottery-seeking pseudo-victims running around bringing us all down, or that most claims actually have merit and at least deserve a day in court.”

State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) agreed that state agencies and private companies should be treated equally when it comes to legal liability.

“Clearly, if a private business committed a negligent act, we would certainly not say to a family that lost a loved one, ‘You have no recourse,’ ” said Dunn, who is vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “But there’s no recourse to the family if the state was the one that acted negligently.”

Winters, however, said that Caltrans’ immunity is not absolute and cited a 1979 case that mirrors the Tran family’s situation.

A suit against the agency by Sally Hill, a motorist involved in a similar truck accident in Los Angeles County, was initially dismissed but later reinstated on appeal because “there is no theory which could justify an exercise of discretion to send a 15-foot, 7-inch trailer along a route with a 15-foot, 3-inch overpass,” said the appellate court’s opinion. “The issuance of the permit in the circumstance of this case created a dangerous condition on the highway.”

The case has not been cited since it was issued and its strength as a precedent is unclear, Winters said.

But regardless of whether the courts would grant a similar exception in the Tran accident, “this is one of the rare cases where the state should step forward” and offer compensation voluntarily, he said.

“Most state lawsuits that are paid generally involve true incidents of horrific injuries that could easily be prevented,” he said. “It’s going to happen. That family has to be taken care of. The system is set up to compensate the damage done to that family.”

Caltrans’ immunity is not the only obstacle to a lawsuit, lawyers said. The agency’s effective lawyers and conservative Southern California juries add to difficulties.

And language in the truck permit issued by Caltrans add further protections for the state. Fine print in the applications submitted by trucking companies say the permit holder must verify the routing accuracy and is responsible for any death or damage caused by any act or omission by the state.

With this provision “they would probably get out of the suit pretty early and would have the truck company’s insurance paying for their defense and any kind of judgment,” said Robert Guilford, a Los Angeles personal-injury lawyer.

Guilford said a claim against Statewide Transport and CalPermits, a private permitting organization that forwarded Statewide Transport’s permit application to Caltrans, would likely be more successful than a suit against Caltrans.

Attempts to contact Statewide Transport officials were unsuccessful and a spokesperson for CalPermits declined to discuss the company’s liability.

Lawyers said a lawsuit would help more than the family of Tam Trong Tran. The public also would benefit from the additional pressure a suit would bring to find out how the mistake happened.

“One of the things about litigation is the process of discovery and investigating why these kind of things happen,” Winters said. “We’ll know exactly why it happened and they’ll fix it.”