Camper Struck By Falling Tree Settles for Record $47.5M
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Photo Credit: Aadarsh AeKae/Shutterstock.com</[/caption] A young man whose leg was amputated after a 75-foot tree fell on him while camping has agreed to settle a lawsuit for $47.5 million, the largest personal injury settlement for a single plaintiff in California, according to his lawyers. Zachary Rowe was 12 years old when his family went camping in San Mateo County Memorial Park in 2012. One early morning, a tan oak tree fell on their tent, crushing Rowe while he slept. Rowe had to have 30 surgeries and a leg amputated. The settlement resolves claims that San Mateo County, which owned the campground, and electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which operated power lines 37 feet from the tree, were negligent for creating a dangerous property. Both lost precedential appellate decisions last year that found neither were immune from liability. “After last summer, when those decisions were rendered, the county and everybody knew they were in for this case and it was going to go to trial,” said Rowe’s lawyer, Tim Tietjen of San Francisco’s Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn. “They were aware of the massive injuries sustained by my client, and this case had the potential to be a $100 million case. They were facing a huge price tag if they didn’t come to the table and talk settlement.” A lawyer for San Mateo County, Dennis Ward of Ropers Majeski Kohn Bentley in San Jose, California, and PG&E attorney Gregory Read, of special counsel at San Francisco’s Gough & Hancock, did not respond to requests for comment. Under this month’s settlement, San Mateo County agreed to pay $24 million, and Davey Tree Expert Co., a tree inspection consulting service, will provide another $6 million. PG&E’s vegetation management contractor, Western Environmental Consultants Inc., paid $17.5 million and indemnified the utility. The two appellate decisions prior to the settlement could clarify the liability of real estate owners, both private and public, particularly in other cases where trees have fallen on people. In June, for instance, a falling tree killed a doctor in Danville, California, who was driving on a freeway. And since 2015, falling trees have killed two campers and one employee at Yosemite National Park. “They provide clarification and provide protection to campers,” Tietjen said of the rulings. “When families pay a fee, nobody wants a rotten tree falling on them, killing or crushing them. The assumption they have is it’s created by the parks, and it’s a safe place to go to. And this reaffirms this.” In 2017, California’s First District Court of Appeal rejected writs of mandate filed by both PG&E and San Mateo County after a San Mateo County Superior Court judge rejected their motions for summary judgment on immunity grounds. In one appeal, San Mateo County insisted that it was exempt under a California statute that shields governments from tort claims arising from a natural condition of any “unimproved public property.” But Tietjen said the courts had never defined “unimproved” or “improved” property. “It was improvements to areas around the tree, the stripping of soil around the tree, compaction of soil around the tree, compaction and creation of the roadway adjacent to the tree,” he said. “All those things, according to our experts, increased the likelihood of Armillaria developing and causing the tree to die. The court said with that evidence now we have a situation here where the hand of man did something that caused or contributed to the decline of the tree, and if that is proven at trial, the plaintiffs are entitled to defeat the immunity.” In the other appeal, PG&E argued in a matter of first impression that it was immune under a California statute protecting private landowners from injury claims related to recreational use of their properties. That statute has exceptions, which include when private landowners take a fee for that use, but PG&E, which had an easement near the campsite, argued it wasn’t liable because Rowe’s family paid their $50 park entrance fee to San Mateo County. The appeals court found that position overbroad and contrary to the statute’s language. “The contrary interpretation urged by PG&E, even were it supported by the statute’s literal language, leads to problematic results we do not think the legislature intended,” the appeals court wrote. “Not only would this create a windfall untethered to the statute’s purpose and potentially deter property owners from opening their land to public use, it also would be dangerous.” Both rulings also could have an impact on the lawsuits over the Northern California wildfires last year, many of which name PG&E. Tietjen, whose firm has filed many of those suits, said it’s the “precise same issue” of whether PG&E’s failure to maintain the vegetation around its power lines contributed to the wildfires. “The difference being the scope of damages is so much greater in the North Bay fires the contractors won’t have the insurance to pay the tab for them,” he said. “So PG&E will have to pay themselves for the North Bay fires.”
