LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) - A Los Angeles deputy city attorney who says she contracted typhus from the trash-infested homeless encampments around City Hall can’t sue the city for failing to maintain cleaner conditions, an appeals court ruled.
Citing the broad immunity from lawsuits California legislators have granted local government, California’s Second District Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Elizabeth Greenwood’s case.
Greenwood sued Los Angeles after she became violently ill with a high fever, stiff neck and headache that lab work determined to be typhus fever. Los Angeles has struggled to control the disease, which is spread by fleas and lice and is concentrated in the homeless community downtown.
Greenwood said she was exposed walking from the parking lot to City Hall East and accused the city of failing to fumigate her building or take other measures to control the spread of the disease. The city first argued any claim was preempted by the Workers’ Compensation Act. After a judge agreed, she amended her complaint to claim the city was responsible for maintaining a dangerous condition of public property.
This effort fared no better, as the trial judge cited California Code, Section 855.4, which bars lawsuits against local government for injuries “resulting from the decision to perform or not to perform any act to promote the public health of the community by preventing disease or controlling the communication of disease.”
The appeals court upheld the dismissal in a March 27 decision. In two prior cases courts upheld immunity, including one where the parents of a girl who played in an abandoned hospital contracted hantavirus and died. In another case, after Greenwood sued, an appeals court rejected similar claims over a typhus infection. Since Greenwood could plead no claims that would overcome the statute, the appeals court ruled, her case was properly dismissed.