Crumbling Sidewalks, Roads Mean Costly Suits

Deferred maintenance of Los Angeles streets, sidewalks, sewer lines and water pipes cost taxpayers more than $22 million last year for injuries and property damage, records show.

Whether it was $4.5 million paid to Bel-Air residents for a landslide caused by a cracked road or $3.6 million paid for trip-and-fall cases, the city is paying for what some contend is the neglect of a badly deteriorating infrastructure.

Solutions “have been deferred and deferred and deferred so the problem becomes too big to deal with at one time,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick.

The judgments and settlements in lawsuits alleging poor maintenance eclipsed the $10 million paid out in 1998 in litigation involving the Police Department, and represented nearly half of the $47 million paid out by the city last year in all lawsuits, officials said.

Some charge that a mind set has developed among city leaders that it is easier to pay a lesser amount in legal settlements than it is to bite the bullet and tackle the $7-billion backlog of street, sidewalk and pipe repairs.

“It’s so expensive,” City Councilman Mike Feuer said. “If you have a sidewalk repair [bill] that costs $450 million, and you are settling trip-and-fall lawsuits for $2 million a year, from a purely dollars-and-cents standpoint, some in the city have looked at that as something you can continue on as we have been, which I disagree with.”

Last week, Feuer met with the city administrative office and chief legislative analyst to begin setting up a task force to come up with a long-term plan for repair and maintenance of city streets, sidewalks and pipelines. He and Chick have called for a 20-year plan for repairing the city’s infrastructure.

Chick said that particularly frustrating are the cases in which there is evidence that the city was warned about a broken sidewalk, cracked road or leaking sewer pipe, but took no action.

“I can’t think of a worse way to spend preciously needed taxpayer dollars,” Chick said.

Even critics acknowledge that it’s an awesome job. The city of Los Angeles is responsible for 6,500 miles of streets, 10,000 miles of sidewalks, 7,500 miles of water pipes and 6,500 miles of sewer pipes, some of which are 50 to 100 years old.

Voters in November turned down a $760-million special tax measure for sidewalk repair, but Chick said it was poorly written and presented.

There is a huge backlog of streets in disrepair, said Greg Scott, director of the city Bureau of Street Services.

At the current rate of 150 miles repaved each year, streets would be repaved once every 43 years, Scott said. “The problem is, the average street only lasts 25 years,” he said.

Two of the biggest payouts last year involved street conditions, including the $4.5 million paid to residents of Bel-Air after cracks in a street contributed to a landslide.

City Council members voted to pay $3 million during the last two years to residents of a neighborhood in Playa del Rey after homes were damaged when the ground subsided around a 70-year-old sewer pipe, a problem the lawsuit alleged should have been fixed earlier.

“We had a very old sewer line,” Assistant City Atty. Patricia Tubert recalled. “It was 50 years old. When it was installed there were air pockets.”

Sanitation Bureau officials said the city plans to spend about $1.2 billion during the next 10 years to fix about 20% of the worst sewer lines.

The Department of Water and Power is also struggling to find funds to replace its old pipes, some of which have begun springing leaks, damaging nearby properties.

Chick said the city has failed to properly identify and fund repairs for the worst streets, sidewalks, sewage pipes and water lines, even after receiving complaints.

One example was $700,000 paid last year to a man who was injured when he was hit by a car that had slid out of control on Outpost Drive in 1995. The city attorney concluded that a broken water pipe may have contributed to the accident, as did the “smoothly worn concrete roadway” that was made more slippery by the water.

Chick said engineers later determined that the roadway could have been repaired for $40,000.

“What’s so incredibly glaring about this case is that a year and a half after the accident, when the case finally got to us, the necessary repairs and precautions to prevent additional accidents had not been taken,” Chick said.

And a strategy that only considers dollars and cents also misses what Chick called “the human tragedy involved, which ranges from death to serious injury.”

There is the case of Iraj Eshaghian, 58, who tripped over a sidewalk that city engineers admit was “cracked, buckled and uneven” in Holmby Park. Three years later, he is still not fully recovered from a fractured wrist and other injuries.

“There is a plate in my hand and I can’t function the way I did before,” said the mortgage broker. “It will always be with me.”

Tree roots pushed part of the walk 4 inches above the rest of the pavement. City officials admitted that they had received and investigated complaints about sidewalks around the park and were given notice of the problem when another person was injured a year before Eshaghian’s accident.

The council voted to pay him $135,000 after the city attorney’s office warned that a larger judgment could go against the city in court, “especially in view of the evidence regarding prior notice.”

Although there were no injuries cited in a lawsuit filed by Joe and Helen Bergenfeld, there was the emotional trauma of losing a house because of city negligence, according to David Wilzig, their attorney.

The city paid the Bergenfelds $500,000 in November for the cost of their home on Calle Vista Court in Northridge. The home was inundated and damaged by a mudslide from the city’s adjacent Palisades Park. The couple claimed the city failed to properly maintain the park despite complaints by neighbors.

“We cited their failure to manage the park, their failure to clean channels,” Wilzig said. “It was very poorly maintained.”

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No Repairs, Many Lawsuits

The total cost to the city of Los Angeles last year for lawsuits involving injury and property damage related to poor conditions of city streets, sidewalks, sewer lines and water pipes was more than $22 million. Cases settled include:

* $9 million to settle a lawsuit by five people injured when a motorist crossed a center dividing line, claiming he could not see the reflective paint. The city claimed that the driver was at fault for being intoxicated, but the council settled after the city attorney said the city had no record of recent maintenance of the double yellow line on Alameda Street in San Pedro.

* $4.5 million paid to residents including Robert Amonic, a resident of the 11000 block of Chalon Road in Bel-Air, whose properties were damaged by a mudslide allegedly caused when water passed through cracks in an old city street.

* $3 million paid to residents of a Playa del Rey neighborhood who claimed that their homes were damaged when the ground subsided around a 70-year-old sewer pipe, a problem the lawsuit alleged should have been addressed.

* $750,000 paid to settle a lawsuit by a man who was injured when his car slid out of control on Outpost Drive near the Hollywood Bowl in 1995. The city attorney’s report found that a broken water pipe appeared to have contributed to the accident, as did the “old, smoothly worn concrete roadway” that was made more slippery by the water.

* $500,000 to Joe and Helen Bergenfeld of Northridge, whose home on Calle Vista Court was damaged by a mudslide from the city’s adjacent Palisades Park, which the couple claimed the city failed to properly maintain despite complaints by neighbors.

The city also paid $3.6 million to settle “trip and fall” claims and lawsuits last year, most involving injuries suffered when pedestrians tripped over cracked or uplifted sidewalks. Those cases include:

* $175,000 to Robert Barth, who was standing on a curb on Chatsworth Street when it crumbled beneath him, causing him serious injury.

* $150,000 paid to Shirin Nouri, who was injured after tripping over a two-inch offset in the sidewalk on Moorpark Street.

* $125,000 paid to Helen Lawrence, who was injured when she tripped over a 1 1/2-inch offset in the sidewalk on Devonshire Street.

* $135,000 to Iraj Eshaghian, who was injured after tripping over a four-inch offset in a sidewalk that had buckled on Club View Drive in West Los Angeles.

* $272,960 paid to Jack Rosenfeld of Encino, who alleged he was injured in a fall seven months after complaints were made to the city about poor drainage and street conditions in front of his house. City Atty. James Hahn told the council in a report that “records indicate that the city was then unable to remedy the situation due to budgetary restrictions.” It would have cost less than $100,000 to fix.