Jury awards $17 million to woman who broke her ankle in Long Beach pothole

A jury has awarded nearly $17.5 million in damages to a Long Beach woman who developed a rare pain condition after fracturing her ankle when she stepped in a pothole outside a Zaferia neighborhood supermarket.

The city of Long Beach was deemed liable based on multiple factors in the 21-day trial that wrapped on Aug. 8.

Issues included a flawed curb design that allowed multiple potholes to develop, an extended delay in fixing numerous potholes in the loading zone and failing to have a system in place for city employees to highlight hazardous areas for pedestrians.

“It’s very simple, if you have a loading zone, you don’t have potholes develop there,” said the plaintiff’s attorney Arash Homampour.

In May 2020, two months after pandemic restrictions went into effect, 50-year-old Eva Vallin had parked in a loading zone on Gladys Avenue and walked into La Bodega Market on East Anaheim Street to buy groceries around 9:45 a.m.

Around the corner on Anaheim Street, the curb has a concrete gutter to avoid water accumulating and eroding the area next to the curb, but on Gladys Avenue, there was no gutter, and, over time, standing water created a series of potholes in the loading zone, according to the lawsuit.

It alleged that two city employees passed by the location weekly: a street sweeper and a traffic citation officer.

Despite being tasked with that route and instructed not to pass the street sweeper over a pothole, the series of potholes went unfixed, according to the lawsuit.

“What we revealed is they were not really trained to tell people at the city that could do something about these dangerous potholes,” Homampour said.

Vallin alleged that when she returned to her car along with the store manager, who was carrying her box of groceries, she stepped off the curb and her left foot landed in one of the potholes, as did her right foot. She fell to the ground, suffering a fractured left ankle and a sprain to her right ankle.

Vallin had surgery on the ankle the next day and remained hospitalized for nine days before getting discharged in a wheelchair, which she has used along with crutches for the past four years, according to her lawsuit.

As a result of the injury and subsequent surgery, she says she was diagnosed in March 2022 with a rare condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.

“It’s a documented, valid, scientifically, medically recognized pain disorder that when you suffer an injury, the nervous system goes haywire for some unknown reason,” Homampour said.

Since the fall, she has had over 250 medical appointments resulting in over $277,000 in medical expenses.

There is no cure for CRPS, according to her lawsuit, and she now requires eight to 12 hours of supervised care per day. Court documents say her future treatment plan includes monthly ketamine infusions — to help her disassociate from the pain — and physical therapy.

“The city’s year-plus long failure to address a known hazardous condition of dangerous potholes in a loading zone … coupled with its flawed decision to implement an asphalt-to-curb system prone to potholes demonstrates a multi-layered negligence in design, maintenance and inspection,” Homampour said.

The city’s attorneys contended that Vallin, who testified through a Spanish translator, told a first responder who did not speak Spanish that she “tripped” off the curb.

“Generally speaking, we do not believe that the outcome was correct regarding liability,” said Howard Russell, Long Beach’s principal deputy city attorney.

In its closing argument, the plaintiff’s attorney’s argued the city had 52 weeks to fix the hazard before Vallin fell into it, something that happened in just one second.

The two sides were unable to reach a settlement before the trial began.

“The insurance company could have saved the city money, but instead let it go all the way to a verdict, and I think the insurance company’s ultimately going to have to pay it,” Homampour said.

The jury awarded Vallin just over $277,000 for her past medical expenses, $7 million for her future medical expenses, $1.2 million for her past pain and suffering and $9 million for her future mental/physical suffering.

The city has not said if it will contest the verdict.

“We intend to consider all of our options, including appeal,” Russell said.

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