California Cities Could be Liable for Tiger Woods Crash
The two cities responsible for maintaining the road could be in trouble.
Earlier this week, golf pro and sports celebrity Tiger Woods sustained severe injuries to his legs when his car rolled over on a winding, sloped road in Rancho Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills Estates, two Californian cities. Woods is still recovering after undergoing emergency surgery to treat multiple open bone fractures, during which he had to have a rod inserted into his tibia to keep his bones stable. While Woods recovers, the question is, as is often is, whose fault was this? According to a California attorney, it could be the cities’.
According to Neil Shouse, a former deputy district attorney of Los Angeles County, the particular stretch of road where Woods’ car rolled over has been the site of at least 13 different accidents, at least as far as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department knows. Shouse has alleged that if this dangerously winding road has been left in its current state by its steward cities, then the cities could be liable for Woods’ injuries due to negligence.
“That would be data that would put that cities on notice that it’s a dangerous stretch of roadway,” Shouse told USA TODAY Sports. “And their failure to take reasonable steps to alleviate that danger, to either redesign the roadway or add a traffic signal, reduce the speed limit, add speed bumps, take various measures to reduce the risk, their failure to do that could potentially subject them to liability.”
“On behalf of our staff, it was an honor to provide orthopaedic trauma care to one of our generation’s greatest athletes.”
Tiger Woods has been transferred to one of the top hospitals in the U.S. to continue his recovery: https://t.co/HpA3gSfppM pic.twitter.com/gGk8WIDySr
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) February 26, 2021
Attorney Michael Jenkins has said that placing liability on the cities will require a very specific set of information, such as the cities’ precise record on the state of the road and its various accidents. “These are very fact-dependent inquiries,” Jenkins said. “Ultimately the question is whether there’s a dangerous condition of public property.”
An investigation is being conducted by the Sheriff’s Department to determine if there were any extraneous factors in the incident, such as Woods driving impaired in some manner, though so far they have not found evidence to indicate this was anything other than an accident. Representatives from both of the steward cities have declined to comment on the matter.