This amputation dangerous condition injury case began at an intersection that West Hollywood had been warned about before. On August 3, 2018, our client was riding his motorcycle through the intersection of Fountain Avenue and Formosa Avenue when a driver named Troy Edwards ran a stop sign, struck him, and fled the scene. Edwards was later convicted of a felony hit and run, his eleventh felony conviction. Our client survived, but he lost his left leg below the knee. Because the driver had limited insurance and few assets, the real question was whether the City of West Hollywood bore its own responsibility for an intersection design that made a collision like this foreseeable. The case against the city settled at mediation for $10,000,000 gross.
$10M
Gross settlement against the City of West Hollywood
6 months
California deadline to file a government claim
835
Government Code dangerous condition of public property statute
On August 3, 2018, our client was riding his motorcycle through the intersection of Fountain Avenue and Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood when a driver ran a stop sign, struck him, and fled the scene. Our client lost his left leg below the knee. A driver blowing through a stop sign and causing a catastrophic injury is, on its own, a strong claim against that driver. The driver here had limited insurance and even more limited assets, so pursuing him alone would never have come close to compensating our client for the loss of a limb. The central question became whether the City of West Hollywood bore its own independent responsibility for the intersection design that made a collision like this foreseeable.
We built the case against the City of West Hollywood under California's dangerous condition of public property statute, Government Code section 835. The intersection had an unrestricted stop sign configuration with no left-turn restriction, despite a documented history of prior complaints and prior collisions at that exact location. The city had the information it needed to recognize the intersection as a known hazard, and it did not act on that information before our client was catastrophically injured. When a dangerous roadway or intersection condition contributes to a crash, the public entity responsible for that roadway may share liability, and public entities carry the resources to fully compensate a catastrophic injury.
The city argued that the fleeing driver was solely at fault, that its intersection design was protected by design immunity, and that there had been no similar accidents in the preceding ten years. Each defense had an answer.
California law rejects the all-or-nothing framing that a criminal driver's conduct breaks the chain of causation. A public entity can share responsibility for a dangerous condition even when a third party's independent negligence also contributed to the injury, provided the dangerous condition itself was a substantial factor in causing the harm.
Design immunity only protects a public entity when the specific design feature causing the injury was affirmatively approved by an employee exercising discretionary authority, based on substantial evidence supporting the reasonableness of that design. We focused our investigation on the city's own records regarding this intersection and the actual basis, or lack of basis, for the original decision not to restrict turning movements or add signage.
A public entity's assertion that a location has no reported history of similar collisions is frequently incomplete, particularly when near-miss reports, resident complaints, or informal notifications never made their way into a formal collision database. Establishing actual or constructive notice does not require prior collisions identical in every detail.
Together these answers established that the city knew, or should have known, that the intersection created a substantial risk of the type of harm that occurred.
Under Government Code section 835, a public entity can be held liable when its property was in a dangerous condition, the condition created a foreseeable risk of the type of injury that occurred, and the entity had actual or constructive notice of the condition with enough time to protect against it. There is a catch that injured people need to understand immediately. Claims against a city, county, or other public entity require a formal government tort claim, typically within just six months of the injury, far shorter than the two years that generally applies to claims against private parties. This deadline does not pause for surgery, recovery, or the time it takes to find the right attorney, and missing it usually bars the claim permanently.
The case settled at mediation on May 3, 2022 for $10,000,000 gross, following litigation against the City of West Hollywood under the dangerous condition of public property statute. The result was reported by the Daily Journal on August 19, 2022. Scott E. Boyer served as lead counsel, with Arash Homampour serving as co-counsel on the litigation team. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The Homampour Law Firm handles catastrophic injury cases against government entities on a contingency fee basis, advancing the costs of the case, so clients pay nothing unless there is a recovery.
The breakdowns below cover catastrophic injury damages, amputation life care planning, dangerous condition liability against a public entity, prosthetics and future care documentation, and how actual and constructive notice are proven.
Catastrophic injury damages framework
Amputation life care planning
We try catastrophic injury and dangerous condition cases against government defendants as counsel or co-counsel and pay statutory referral fees.
Refer a caseOur client was riding his motorcycle through the intersection of Fountain Avenue and Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood on August 3, 2018, when a driver ran a stop sign, struck him, and fled the scene. Our client lost his left leg below the knee.
The driver had limited insurance and assets, and the intersection itself had a documented history of complaints and prior collisions, supporting a separate claim that the city's own dangerous intersection design contributed to the injury.
For most personal injury claims against a California public entity, a formal government tort claim must be presented within six months of the injury, compared to the standard two-year deadline for claims against private parties. Missing this deadline usually bars the claim entirely, so injured people should contact an attorney immediately.
