Suit Blames Volunteers for Traffic Death

By all accounts, the junction of Silver Lake Boulevard and the Hollywood Freeway was a mess. Weeds were everywhere. The street’s three median islands, paved-over slabs of concrete and asphalt, were unsightly. And people routinely used the brush near the freeway offramps as their bathroom.

Volunteers decided to beautify the area they consider the “gateway” into Silver Lake, a community between downtown and Hollywood where hillside yuppies mix with new immigrants. The do-gooders raised some federal funds and donated their time for work that will ultimately cost more than $100,000. They showed up on weekends to tear out the concrete and asphalt and plant trees and plants in the medians. They painted three murals on walls under the freeway. They lobbied Caltrans to keep trimming the vegetation.

Great, right?

Wrong, according to some of the volunteers.

They and some of the area’s nonprofit organizations, such as the Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce, the Silver Lake Improvement Assn. and the Silver Lake Residents Assn., have been named as co-defendants in a $25-million wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles by the family of a man who was killed in a car accident at that intersection on May 8, 1999.

Kwang Min Kim, 20, was killed when his 1998 Lexus--traveling north on Silver Lake--glanced off a truck driven by Armando Vasquez, who was making a left-hand turn from the southbound lanes of the boulevard onto the freeway’s southbound onramp, and crashed into a light pole.

Although Vasquez also is named as a defendant, the suit alleges that the accident occurred because the drivers’ vision was obstructed by two piles of dirt--one 4 1/2 feet high and the other 3 1/2 feet high--left in two medians by the volunteers.

Other debris was hauled away, but the two mounds constituted an “obstruction [that] created a dangerous condition,” the suit said. It added: “None of the defendants made any attempt to eliminate the obstruction by removing the dirt and debris.”

The lawsuit has outraged the locals in Silver Lake. Their enthusiasm to volunteer for this and other activities has suffered, some say, because people are afraid of getting sued.

“What we do on our own time is because we care,” said Vince Brook, president of the Silver Lake Improvement Assn., who has lived in the area for 21 years. “People are already panicking because they don’t want to take the risk.”

Beautification Work Has Slowed

Community activist David Bermudez, who, like Brook, was individually named last October as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, added: “I live in this community. I grew up in this community. I’m proud of what I did to beautify it. When I first heard about the accident, I initially felt bad about it. But I don’t know for a fact that I [helped] cause that accident.”

Work on the beautification project, dubbed the Gateway to Silver Lake 2000 Project, has slowed, partly in reaction to the lawsuit.

Only one of the three median parcels has fresh plants and trees and five mural panels still have to be painted.

One area group, the 100-member Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce, may have to declare bankruptcy because it doesn’t have the funds to fight the lawsuit. “We have to scramble around for money that we don’t have,” chamber President Cheryl Revkin, a chiropractor, said.

Adding insult to injury, in the eyes of the do-gooders, was the city’s filing of a cross-complaint against the other defendants. City officials say the filing was a routine action to protect the city should it lose the case. The people in Silver Lake took the cross-complaint as a betrayal. They thought they were doing the work with the city’s blessing.

“It was shocking to the individuals sued,” said Kathy Rowley, a board member with the Silver Lake Residents Assn.

Long Beach attorney Robert M. Zavidow, who is representing Kim’s family, did not respond to repeated telephone requests for an interview.

The cross-complaint notwithstanding, city officials said they are confident that the Kims’ lawsuit can be thrown out, noting some circumstances surrounding the accident that might get the volunteers off the hook.

First, a police report said that Kim was speeding at the time of the accident. Deputy City Atty. Suzanne Christiansen said skid marks at the scene indicated that Kim “was greatly in excess” of the 25 mph speed limit on Silver Lake.

Also, a coroner’s report said Kim’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the accident was 0.15%, well above the legal permissible limit of 0.08% in California.

Christiansen said those factors, and the opinion of a city expert that the two piles of dirt did not affect the drivers’ line of sight, would support a move for summary judgment she plans to file shortly.

That action, she said, could kill the lawsuit and exonerate the do-gooders if, as expected, they join in the city’s motion to dismiss.

“[The piles of dirt] didn’t have anything to do with the accident,” Christiansen said.

Volunteer Groups Rarely Sued

City officials said it is rare for volunteer groups to be sued as a result of their efforts to beautify the city.

Usually, said Chief Assistant City Atty. Thomas C. Hokinson, unpaid city commissioners or others in a similar capacity may be named in civil actions.

One do-gooder who doesn’t apologize for his volunteer work at the freeway is Bermudez, a staffer with the Central City Action Committee in Echo Park who is known as the Spray Man because of his graffiti-fighting exploits.

The 40-year-old Bermudez, who lives in Silver Lake, said he was a driving force behind the effort, writing a proposal that ultimately led to an $11,000 federal grant from the Los Angeles Urban Resources Partnership, which provides money for beautification projects. He lent his landscaping skills to the project and hauled away 21 bags of weeds by himself after one Saturday’s worth of work.

Bermudez initially feared that he might lose his home if he was found to be liable for the accident that killed Kim.

But he later learned that provisions in his homeowner’s insurance would cover him.

Bermudez was guarded the other day when asked about the project. But when prodded, he said he was happy about his volunteerism although some motorists were angry at him for temporarily blocking a freeway onramp.

“Some people called me names,” he said, “but I’m happy with the work I did out there. It was something I believed in.”