Enhance La Jolla has been deemed not responsible in connection with a lawsuit over a trip-and-fall incident in The Village, according to Chairman Ed Witt.
The suit was filed against the city of San Diego in June 2022 for an undisclosed amount after a person walking along Silverado Street reportedly tripped on raised decorative pavers in September 2021.
The city ed the claim to Enhance La Jolla’s insurance carrier, arguing that Enhance La Jolla should have identified and “barricaded” the hazards with caution tape and/or cones and notified the city.
“I was informed the other day that … that one has been settled” and that Enhance La Jolla was deemed not responsible, Witt said at the group’s April 18 meeting. “So that is really good news.”
Enhance La Jolla is a nonprofit that manages the Maintenance Assessment District in The Village with authority to enhance services provided by the city, including landscape maintenance, street and sidewalk cleaning, litter and graffiti abatement and additional trash collection. It also can privately fund and complete projects in public spaces, such as park and trash can upgrades, bench installation, sign augmentation, public art and tree canopies on main thoroughfares.
An additional lawsuit was filed against the city Sept. 29 by La Jolla resident Ann Kerr, a former president of the La Jolla Town Council, a board member of the La Jolla Community Center and president of the La Jolla Christmas Parade.
She alleged that in June 2022 she was injured when she tripped and fell on a cracked and uneven portion of sidewalk on Ivanhoe Avenue.
That suit, which the city also ed to Enhance La Jolla’s insurance carrier, remains unsettled.
An earlier lawsuit filed against the city in April 2022 stated that in January 2020, a resident was walking along Pearl Street when she tripped in an empty tree well, fell and hit her face on the sidewalk.
That case was settled for $40,000, and Enhance La Jolla’s insurance paid for it after the city ed it along.
Enhance La Jolla argued it should not have been involved in any of the lawsuits because it was not named as a defendant in any of them and should not bear responsibility.
Kerr told the La Jolla Light last year that she never intended for Enhance La Jolla to be involved in her suit.
But the San Diego city attorney’s office said the group had signed a four-year contract with the city in 2019 in which it “agreed to regularly maintain all sidewalks consistent with [a] City Council policy and to barricade all sidewalk safety hazards and to notify the city.”
Witt told the Light that the location cited in Kerr’s lawsuit was reported to the city via its Get It Done app in 2017 and “the city did nothing” to repair it.
A new contract with the city dated July 1 last year “takes away the liability of the MAD for trip-and-fall issues on sidewalks,” Witt said. “We are no longer responsible for things we haven’t done. … If we did something to create a hazard, we would then be responsible.”
Though Kerr’s lawsuit was filed after the new contract took effect, the old contract was in effect when the incident occurred.
Other Enhance La Jolla news
Donations: Enhance La Jolla is making headway on some of its projects, thanks in part to recent donations.
Witt said $13,000 worth of donations have been collected so far this year.
Enhance La Jolla’s ongoing projects include the replacement of hanging flower baskets along Girard Avenue.
“The hanging flower baskets have been a huge project for us,” Witt said. “We have pretty much completed [installation on] Girard from Prospect Street to Torrey Pines Road. We buy the pots, flowers, hangers [and] brackets and [volunteers] carry out the labor.
“We still have four pots on order that will be installed on Prospect Street. … I hope the public and the board agree the pots look really nice.”
The group maintains more than 70 baskets in the MAD. “They aren’t all perfect, but they will be by the time we are done with the whole project,” Witt said.
To help out, board member Ann Dynes recently donated $5,000 after fielding a complaint from an optician on Silverado Street.
“[The optician] pointed to one of the baskets and said … ‘What is Enhance La Jolla doing about that?’ So I feel some ownership of the baskets,” Dynes said with a laugh.
Representatives of the La Jolla Garden Club have given repeat $1,000 donations to Enhance La Jolla for the flower basket project. The most recent was given during the April 18 meeting.
Another project is to tend to benches throughout The Village by installing armrests in the middle and refurbishing memorial benches.
Enhance La Jolla board member Peter Wagner recently donated $2,000 for more armrests on benches throughout The Village.
In addition, the La Jolla Town Foundation, one of the original shepherds of the memorial bench program, donated $5,186 to clean and re-stain the benches.
Witt said new memorial plaques will not be installed, “but we want to improve the benches where we can. … So when we are cleaning the sidewalk, all the benches that are wood are power-washed and we will come back, sand it and stain it. So the benches that are in tough shape will be looking a whole lot better in the very near future.”
Next meeting: Enhance La Jolla meets quarterly or as needed. The next scheduled meeting is at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 18, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 700 Prospect St. Learn more at enhancelajolla.org. ◆
