Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Page 3
Court of Appeal:
Inadequate Failure to Warn Won’t Defeat Design Immunity
Opinion Says Defense Is a Shield to Public-Entity Liability Only if There’s No Alert to Possible Danger
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district, in a case that harks to a fatal accident in 2016 and spawned a 2023 California Supreme Court opinion, has affirmed a 2024 summary judgment in favor of the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, holding that a failure to warn of a danger defeats the defense of design immunity only if there is a complete absence of a cautioning.
Justice Nicholas F. Daum authored Thursday’s opinion affirming a decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David K. Reinert. He found no liability to Betty Tansavatdi who sued based on the death of her son, Jonathan Tansavatdi, caused by a March 8, 2016 collision with a truck while he was riding his bicycle along Hawthorne Boulevard.
Her theories were that the lack of a bike lane created a dangerous condition on public property and that, in any event, there was a failure to warn of the peril.
The city invoked Government Code §830.6 which confers immunity on a public entity where an injury was “caused by the plan or design of a construction of, or an improvement to, public property where such plan or design has been approved in advance of the construction or improvement” by an appropriate agency.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Broadbelt on Aug. 8, 2018 granted summary judgment in favor of the city, ruling that design immunity shielded it from liability. He did not reach the issue of a failure to warn.
2021 Decision
In its Jan. 29, 2021 decision, Div. Four of this district’s Court of Appeal declared, in an opinion by then-Presiding Justice Nora M. Manella (now retired):
“[F]ollowing our Supreme Court’s binding precedent, we hold that even where design immunity covers a dangerous condition, it does not categorically preclude liability for failure to warn about that dangerous condition. We therefore vacate the judgment in part and remand to the trial court to consider appellant’s failure to warn theory.”
Manella cited the California Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Cameron v. State of California. There, the 5-2 majority said:
“[W]e conclude that where the state is immune from liability for injuries caused by a dangerous condition of its property because the dangerous condition was created as a result of a plan or design which conferred immunity under section 830.6, the state may nevertheless be liable for failure to warn of this dangerous condition where the failure to warn is negligent and is an independent, separate, concurring cause of the accident.”
Supreme Court’s Opinion
The California Supreme Court granted review, apparently to resolve a conflict among the courts of appeal. Embracing its decision in Cameron, it affirmed the opinion Manella authored and disapproved two contrary opinions.
Justice Joshua Groban declared:
“Relying on our holding in Cameron v. State of California…, we conclude that design immunity does not categorically preclude failure to warn claims that involve a discretionarily approved element of a roadway….The effect of Cameron is that while section 830.6 shields public entities from liability for injuries resulting from the design of the physical features of a roadway, they nonetheless retain a duty to warn of known dangers that the roadway presents to the public.”
The justice noted that the court in Cameron “did not address whether design immunity might apply if the public entity is able to show that the presence or absence of warning signs was part of the approved design” and said there was no need to do so at the present time.
Back in the Superior Court, the city presented evidence that in 2009, it did consider, as part of its design plan, what signs to place on Hawthorne Avenue in the area where the accident occurred, and Reinert on Sept. 6, 2024—three days short of eight years since the original summary judgment ruling—found for the defendant.
Daum’s Decision
Daum wrote:
“[T]he Supreme Court has not yet resolved whether and how design immunity applies when warning signs about a danger are themselves part of an approved public design. Following further proceedings in the trial court, that question is now squarely before us.
“We hold as follows. When (a) the public entity has provided some warning of the allegedly dangerous condition, and (b) that warning was included as part of a reasonable plan or design that would be otherwise entitled to design immunity under section 830.6, then (c) design immunity may apply.”
The justice declared:
“In our view, there is an important distinction between cases in which the public entity has provided no warning at all of the dangerous condition, and cases (like this one) in which the public entity has provided some warning of the allegedly dangerous condition—but a plaintiff alleges the warning was insufficient. Complaints about the adequacy of an existing warning approved as part of a government’s design for public infrastructure are, in essence, complaints about the government’s design of the warning. Such complaints fall into the area where design immunity has long applied.”
The case is Tansavatdi v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes, 2026 S.O.S. 3044.
Armen Akaragian and Adam Feit of the mid-Wilshire firm of Mardirossian Akaragian joined with San Diego lawyer Benjamin I. Siminou of Singleton Schreiber in representing Betty Tansavatdi. David M. Ferrante of the Pasadena firm of Wesierski & Zurek and Karen M. Stepanyan and Daniel P. Barer of Pollak, Vida & Barer in West Los Angeles acted for the city.
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