Dole Citrus v. State of California

HOLLENHORST, Acting P.J.

In this personal injury action, the trial court upheld the state's claim of design immunity and granted the state's motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff, Dole Citrus, a California corporation, appeals, contending that, as a matter of law, the state lost the design immunity protection of Government Code section 830.6 due to changed circumstances. We agree with the trial court that Dole Citrus presented insufficient evidence of changed circumstances. We therefore affirm.

On November 22, 1993, Frank Limon, a Dole Citrus employee, was driving on interstate 10 towards the Cherry Avenue overcrossing when a person lit himself on fire and jumped off the Cherry Avenue overcrossing. The burning body crashed through the windshield of Mr. Limon's car, severely injuring him. Dole alleged that it paid over $200,000 in workers' compensation benefits on behalf of Mr. Limon.

Dole sought to recover the amount of those benefits from the state by contending that the Cherry Avenue overpass was a defective and dangerous condition because "the guardrail along the side of the overpass was inadequate in height to prevent objects from being thrown onto or falling onto…

In this personal injury action, the trial court upheld the state’s claim of design immunity and granted the state’s motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff, Dole Citrus, a California corporation, appeals, contending that, as a matter of law, the state lost the design *489 immunity protection of Government Code section 830.6 due to changed circumstances. We agree with the trial court that Dole Citrus presented insufficient evidence of changed circumstances. We therefore affirm.

Undisputed Facts

On November 22, 1993, Frank Limón, a Dole Citrus employee, was driving on interstate 10 towards the Cherry Avenue overcrossing when a person lit himself on fire and jumped off the Cherry Avenue overcrossing. The burning body crashed through the windshield of Mr. Limón’s car, severely injuring him. Dole alleged that it paid over $200,000 in workers’ compensation benefits on behalf of Mr. Limón.

Dole sought to recover the amount of those benefits from the state by contending that the Cherry Avenue overpass was a defective and dangerous condition because “the guardrail along the side of the overpass was inadequate in height to prevent objects from being thrown onto or falling onto…

I respectfully dissent.

In my view, Dole’s opposition to the state’s summary judgment motion was sufficient to raise a triable issue of material fact with respect to changed conditions. Specifically, Dole submitted the state’s own design manuals to show that highway overcrossings with pedestrian walkways in urban areas should include protective fencing. If the Cherry Avenue overcrossing were built in accordance with the design manual in effect at the time of the accident at issue in this case, the overcrossing would have had protective fencing. The state’s design change was not, as the majority contends, merely an improvement on an already effective design; it was an entirely new design addressing a problem that was not addressed when the Cherry Avenue overcrossing was built—that pedestrians throw objects off over-crossings into the freeway traffic below. The majority’s analogy to a “better mousetrap” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 493) is inapt. Here, the original design did not prevent people or objects from falling or being thrown from the over-crossing into the traffic below. Using the majority’s mousetrap analogy, the state’s original mousetrap did not catch mice. Thus, the changed…