In Maksimow v. City of South Lake Tahoe, published November 4, 2024, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for the defendant city. On the morning of March 26, 2020, the plaintiff slipped on a patch of ice, 3' x 4', in a public parking lot. The ice was located near a car in the parking lot. She sued the city for maintaining a dangerous condition of public property. The city moved for summary judgment. It presented evidence that the city received no liability claims concerning dangerous conditions in the lot, from January 2017 to the accident date. It also presented evidence that there were no complaints or service requests for snow or ice removal from the lot in the 12 months before the fall. The city had first become aware of the ice patch when the plaintiff presented her claim for damages. The city presented evidence that the car near the ice had been identified for investigation as part of the city's abandoned vehicle abatement plan. Photos of the vehicle on March 12, 2020 showed no ice or snow, and the pavement around the car appeared smooth and dry. Photos taken by the plaintiff two to four weeks after the accident showed a small strip of snow on the passenger side of the car, and no ice or snow near the marked site of the fall. The city presented evidence of its snow and ice removal plan. The plaintiff presented evidence that the city issued a parking citation for the car on March 15, 2020, which cited a municipal code prohibiting obstruction of snow removal equipment. The plaintiff presented photos from the city taken on that date, which showed the lot and car covered in several inches of fresh snow. The parties submitted contradictory evidence from public weather agencies of the amount of snow that fell before the accident date. The plaintiff presented a declaration from a snow expert criticizing the city's snow and ice removal. The trial court sustained objections to both sides' agency evidence of snow fall. It granted the summary judgment motion, finding that the plaintiff had failed to raise a genuine issue of fact on whether the city had actual or constructive notice.
The appellate court agreed. The plaintiff failed to raise an issue on actual notice of the ice. Evidence that the city had actual notice of substantial snowfall and the abandoned car did not establish actual notice of the ice patch, or that it would form near the abandoned car. Evidence that employees were aware of circumstances that could conspire to create an ice patch at some indeterminate time was not enough. The plaintiff also failed to raise an issue on constructive notice. That the city had notice of substantial snowfall and the abandoned car by March 15 did not raise a triable issue on constructive notice of an ice patch 11 days later. There was no evidence there was ice in the lot on March 15. Even if snow and ice go together, both are transitory phenomena. Average daily temperatures did not establish constructive notice of the presence of ice at any particular time. A jury would have no way of knowing whether the accumulated snow and ice in the parking lot existed for such a period of time that the city, in the exercise of due care, could have discovered them and their dangerous character.
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