$300,000 Settlement for Humerus Fracture from Sacramento Sidewalk Defect

Kristopher Peerali, Serena Peerali, and Ali Hosseini secured a $300,000 settlement against a government entity for a rider who suffered a severe orthopedic injury on a Sacramento sidewalk – a result reached only after Peerali Law dismantled the City’s central defense and exposed a decade-long failure to fix a known hazard.

Our client was riding an electric scooter along a sidewalk with her family when the scooter struck a severely uplifted sidewalk slab. The force of the impact threw her to the ground, causing a humerus fracture that required an open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) surgery with hardware placement. She later underwent a second surgery to have the hardware removed.

The City of Sacramento built its defense around a single argument: that riding an e-scooter on a sidewalk violated California state law, and that this statutory violation should defeat or substantially limit recovery. Our team identified a statutory exception directly on point – e-scooter use on a sidewalk is permitted when a rider is entering or exiting an adjacent property – and used it to undercut the City’s comparative fault theory. On liability, a thorough investigation of the sidewalk revealed that the dangerous uplift had existed for well over a decade. A review of the City’s own repair records showed only minor, cosmetic patchwork over the years rather than a permanent fix, establishing that the City had known about the hazard for years and chose not to correct it. We further argued that on a public sidewalk, the City should have anticipated that members of the public would use it in a variety of ways, including on scooters, making its prolonged failure to repair a known dangerous condition an independent basis for liability.

The case resolved at a pre-trial settlement conference for $300,000.00 – a recovery built on defeating the City’s statutory defense and proving its decade-long neglect of a known sidewalk defect. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact us today to discuss your case.