If you are searching for information on a city of Fontana injury case California families have pointed to for years, it is likely because you or someone you love was hurt walking on a street that never should have been without a sidewalk. This is the story of one such case, and what it means for anyone hurt by a public street that a city knew was dangerous and chose not to fix. A San Bernardino County jury returned a verdict of $37.5 million, and the California Court of Appeal later issued a decision that reshaped how California cities can be held responsible for streets that were never built safely in the first place.
$37.5M
San Bernardino County jury verdict
75%
Fault assigned to the City of Fontana
6 months
California deadline to file a government claim
A 14-year-old girl walked to and from her Fontana school along a residential street with no sidewalks. There was nowhere else to walk. She and other students used the bare dirt shoulder, or the traveled roadway itself, every school day, alongside moving cars. On a December afternoon, she was struck and killed by a car driven by an unlicensed 15-year-old. A San Bernardino County jury returned a verdict of $37.5 million, assigning 75 percent of fault to the City of Fontana for failing to build sidewalks on a street it knew children used daily, and 25 percent to the parents of the teenage driver for letting their unlicensed son drive the family car. The case later went to the California Court of Appeal, which issued a decision that reshaped how California cities can be held responsible for streets that were never built safely in the first place.
Most people assume a city can only be sued for something it built wrong, like a pothole or a broken curb. That is not the law. Under California Government Code section 835, a public entity can be held liable for a dangerous condition of its property, and a dangerous condition can include the absence of something the city should have built, not just a defect in something it did build. In this case, the street had no sidewalks at all. Children walking to school had no protected space, forcing them into the road with passing traffic. The city's own engineers had described exactly this kind of situation, pedestrians walking next to moving vehicles, as a potentially hazardous condition in internal city documents. A student survey the city itself conducted years earlier had counted the number of children walking that route to school every day. That is the heart of a city of Fontana injury case: proving the city knew about a dangerous condition, had the ability to fix it, and did not act within a reasonable time.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in a case like this is not what happened on the day of the crash. It is what the city knew, and for how long, before that day ever came.
In the years before this crash, formal letters supporting a sidewalk project on this very street had been sent by the police chief, a deputy city engineer, a state senator, an assemblyman, and the school principal. That is about as clear a signal of notice as a plaintiff's attorney could ask for. The city had been told, repeatedly and by credible voices, that this street needed sidewalks.
City financial records showed tens of millions of dollars in undesignated funds sitting unused during the years the sidewalks were requested. When a city has the money and the notice and still does nothing, a jury is entitled to weigh that inaction against the danger the city left in place.
A city contractor testified that installing sidewalks on the street would have cost roughly six thousand dollars and taken two to three days of work. When the notice, the funds, and a simple fix all existed and the city still did nothing for over a decade, a jury can conclude the inaction was unreasonable, not just unfortunate.
The jury found the City of Fontana 75 percent responsible for the dangerous condition it knew about and left in place.
After the verdict, the case did not simply end. Both sides appealed, and the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, issued an opinion that did more than resolve this one case. It held that a city can be liable under Government Code section 835 for its failure to make a capital improvement, like installing sidewalks, when the absence of that improvement creates a substantial risk of injury that the city knew about and could reasonably have addressed. This extended a principle the California Supreme Court had established decades earlier in Ducey v. Argo Sales Co. (1979) 25 Cal.3d 707, which held that Caltrans could be liable for failing to install median barriers on freeways. The appellate decision in this case brought that same logic down to city streets and sidewalks. In plain terms, a city cannot say it never built the sidewalk and therefore is not responsible. If the absence of a sidewalk, a guardrail, a crosswalk, or another basic safety feature creates a known and serious danger, and the city could reasonably have fixed it, the city can still be held liable for choosing not to.
A San Bernardino County jury returned a $37.5 million verdict, placing 75 percent of the fault on the City of Fontana and 25 percent on the parents of the unlicensed teenage driver. The driver who struck the girl was an unlicensed 15-year-old operating his family's car, and under California's negligent entrustment doctrine and Vehicle Code section 17708, parents who let an unlicensed minor drive can be held responsible for the harm the minor causes. That detail matters for a practical reason: a minor driver often has no assets of his own, so a parent's insurance and negligent entrustment liability can be the only meaningful recovery connected to the driving itself, separate from what the city owes for the dangerous roadway. If a dangerous public street, sidewalk, or intersection contributed to your injury or a family member's death, the clock is already running, because California law imposes a strict six-month deadline to file a government claim against a public entity. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and every case depends on its own facts. The Homampour Law Firm handles these cases on a contingency fee basis and advances the costs of the case, so families pay nothing unless there is a recovery.
The breakdowns below cover proving government notice under section 835.2, the strategy for building a claim against a public entity, and the role of a traffic engineering expert in a dangerous-condition case.
Proving government notice under 835.2
Strategy against a public entity
The traffic engineering expert's role
We try catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases against public entities as counsel or co-counsel and pay statutory referral fees.
Refer a caseYes. Under California Government Code section 835, a city can be held liable for a dangerous condition of public property, including the absence of a needed sidewalk, if the condition created a substantial risk of injury, the city had notice of the danger, and it failed to act within a reasonable time.
You generally have only six months from the date of injury or death to file a government claim before you are permitted to sue a California city or other public entity, which is far shorter than the two-year statute of limitations for most personal injury claims against private parties.
Yes. Under California's negligent entrustment doctrine and Vehicle Code section 17708, parents who allow an unlicensed minor to drive the family vehicle can be held liable for the injuries the minor causes while driving.
