Constant Readers,
A few days ago, on my 27th birthday, I wrote about how the actions of the charmless Dhaliwal brothers may actually be relevant to the case against the City of SF for the Christmas Day death of Carlos Sousa, Jr. and the mauling of Amritpal and Kulbir Dhaliwal. In this post, Ima 'splain how the blame is gonna be spread around. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't look good for the City.)
Under California State law, a public entity can’t be sued under regular old personal injury law. (Cal. Govt. Code Sec. 815.) But State law also says that a public entity is liable for a foreseeable injury caused by a "dangerous condition" on its property that the public entity knew about and had sufficient time prior to the injury to fix. (Cal. Govt. Code Sec. 835.) In this case, you should know that (a) SF owns both the land and the animals at the zoo (the SF Zoological Society just runs the day-to-day operations), (b) the height of the wall at the tiger grotto was 12.5 feet high when the SFZS took over zoo operations in 1993, and (c) obviously, a reasonable inspection system would have uncovered this shortfall at the wall (which is enough to constitute notice of the dangerous condition according to Cal. Govt. Code Sec. 835-1). In fact, reportedly, some folks already knew this was a problem. I could see why SF Zoo Director Mollinedo would shamelessly try to cover his ass, but why was the City Attorney's Office so focused on the brothers?
Because California law recognizes what is called "comparative negligence". (Li v. Yellow Cab Co. of Cal., 13 Cal. 3d 804 (1975)(at bottom of post).) What that means is that, when an injured plaintiff brings suit against a defendant, a court will decide the total amount of damages for that injury and then apportion fault to each party. Based on the level of fault the damages owed by the defendant are reduced. For example, let's say that the injury to Kulbir Dhaliwal was worth $1 million dollars. If the court finds that Dhaliwal was 40% responsible for his own injuries on account of being an obnoxious dumbass, the City would only have to pay $600,000. This system incentivizes that City to blame everyone else: the victims, the Terrace Cafe (which locked its doors while the attack was happening), George W. Bush, global warming and The Rain.
Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of evidence to support the notion that the Dhaliwal brothers did anything outrageous. Aside from the fact that the weed and vodka in the car made it look like the boys were headed to the prom, we have one eyewitness who said that four boys were taunting the animals (the fourth must have been on the grassy knoll) and an admission by Amritpal Dhaliwal that the three boys stood on top of the 3-foot railing, yelling and waiving at Tatiana. In other words, the boys don't appear to have dangled body parts into the grotto like Michael Jackson with a baby, nor did they let the tiger out. I hate to say it, but drunk dudes waving and yelling at a tiger is probably not unusual and is unlikely to constitute negligence sufficient to offset the City's liability at all.
In the last post, I described how the SFZS may well be held "strictly liable" for injuries caused by Tatiana the Tiger. Note that, where there are two defendants, and one subject to strict liability and the other is not, the Court will likely look to the comparative negligence of each party. (Daly v. General Motors Corp., 20 Cal. 3d 725 (1978)(at bottom of post).) In other words, while we were spending time and money fighting for cellphones whose contents were unknown, we might have been better off hounding the one party we know messed up and we can blame: the SFZS. (sfWillie pointed this out ages ago.)
NOTE: Some have pointed out that there is an indemnification clause in the contract between the City and the SF Zoological Society that says the SFZS will be responsible for any injury or loss of life at that zoo. I haven't seen the exact language, but any lawyer will tell you that such clauses are very easy to get around. Even Supervisor Sandoval agrees.
--Melissa
P.S.: Special Thank You to Jim for all his help with this post!
Download li_v_yellow_cab_co.pdf
NERD BONUS: Ever wonder why Board of Supervisor meeting agendas always make the Board vote to settle lawsuits against the City? Because the City doesn't have lawsuit insurance! So, whatever $$ goes to the Dhaliwal brothers or the family of Carlos Sousa, Jr., will be billed to the City directly.
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