State High Court Limits Builders’ Liability

The state Supreme Court limited builders’ responsibility for traffic safety on nearby streets Monday, barring an accident victim from suing a developer that had promised the city to install stoplights at an intersection.

In a 6-1 ruling, the court said the developer and its contractor were not responsible for a crash that injured a motorcyclist at the Los Angeles intersection, even if traffic signals would have prevented the accident.

The developer’s inaction did not make the intersection more dangerous, the court said. The ruling noted that the city’s building permit required the stoplights to be installed before the condominium development was finished but imposed no deadline. The accident took place before the building was completed.

The victim, Francisco Paz, was seriously injured when his motorcycle hit a car in January 1991. The driver of the car was turning left after stopping at a stop sign, the only control at the intersection.

Paz claimed the intersection was dangerous and had been the site of numerous accidents. He blamed Stoneman Corp., the condo developer, for failing to install traffic signals required by its city building permit two years earlier.

The suit was dismissed by a Superior Court judge but reinstated by a state appeals court, which said a jury should be allowed to decide whether the developer had taken an unreasonable time to eliminate a safety hazard and whether its delay was a cause of Paz’s injuries.

The state high court disagreed and ordered the case dismissed.

A developer whose permit includes safety-related conditions can be sued for creating new hazards for the public, or making existing hazards worse, but not for failing to eliminate existing dangers in most cases, said the opinion by Justice Ming Chin.

Chin said Paz might have had a case if the city had a legal obligation to put up a traffic light, or if Stoneman had promised the city and the public to install the light before the date of the accident.