LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – A California appeals court has ruled against the wife of a Los Angeles police officer who claimed he passed typhus on to her because he worked in unsanitary conditions caused by people living on the streets around the Central Community Police Station.
The Second Appellate District made that ruling on March 18 in a lawsuit filed by lawyers at McNicholas & McNicholas and Esner, Chang & Boyer. They argued Barbara Wong could sue Los Angeles over a dangerous condition of public property.
Not so, wrote Justice Audrey Collins wrote. The city enjoys immunity from this kind of claim, she wrote.
“(B)ecause Wong had no contact with the subject property and she has not alleged exposure to any condition of the subject property, Wong has not alleged facts to support a finding that the City had a duty to her,” Collins wrote.
“But even if the City had a duty toward Wong, it was nevertheless immune from liability under section 855.4.”
That section grants immunity for alleged dangerous conditions of public property. It shields public entities and employees from the decision to “perform or not perform any act to promote the public health of the community by preventing disease or controlling the communication of disease” if the decision was an exercise of discretion.
Wong sued several months after her husband became ill, claiming she contracted typhus as a result of sharing a living space. Officers where her husband works are required to interact on a regular basis with the homeless population in downtown L.A., she said, adding that “the encampments of the homeless population within Central Division are unsanitary, unhygienic, unclean, rat-infested and flea-infested.”
The City should have acted on these unsanitary situations, Wong alleged.