Jury Awards $13.1 Million After Algae-Covered Sidewalk Fall Ruptures Athlete's Quadriceps

On July 8, 2021, Lesley Mettler Auld was walking to meet a training client in Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood when she slipped on the sidewalk on the south side of West Dravus Street, between 14th and 15th Avenues West. The walkway ran alongside an apartment building owned by 14th & Dravus LLC, and it was coated in a film of water, moss, and algae that looked to Auld like other wet sidewalks she had already crossed that morning. Nothing about it suggested it would be anything other than wet. It was slimy, her feet went out from under her, and she fell hard with her legs pinned beneath her.

Auld, a certified personal trainer and strength coach who had finished 14 Ironman triathlons and was training for several more races at the time, ruptured both quadriceps tendons in the fall and damaged hardware in her ankle left over from an earlier injury. She called her husband, who drove her to the emergency room at the University of Washington Medical Center. She went on to have a series of operations to repair the torn tendons, three of them by the time a rehabilitation physician evaluated her in January 2023 and found she still had not been able to resume her previous level of activity. A second physician who examined her later that year said she would need at least three more surgeries on her right knee, and that amputation of the right leg above the knee was a possibility if those surgeries failed.

Auld sued the City of Seattle and 14th & Dravus, arguing both had let a known hazard sit on the sidewalk. The city's arborist, Nolan Rundquist, testified that shade, organic debris falling from the hedge on the property owner's land, and the failure to clean the walking surface all encouraged the moss and algae to grow there. The city separately conceded before trial that it bore some responsibility for the sidewalk's condition. 14th & Dravus argued it owed pedestrians no duty at all and that groundwater, not its hedge, caused the algae. The trial court ruled as a matter of law that the land beneath the hedge belonged to 14th & Dravus, and it struck the property owner's contributory-negligence defense before the case reached the jury.

The case went to trial in King County Superior Court in May 2024 and concluded the following month. On June 20, 2024, the jury found both defendants negligent, attributed 52 percent of the fault to 14th & Dravus and 48 percent to the City of Seattle, and awarded Auld $13.1 million for past and future economic and noneconomic damages. The trial judge entered judgment against both defendants that same day for the full amount, based on the apportionment of fault. Ray Dearie of Dearie Law Group represented Auld at trial, and he and Drew Lombardi appear as her attorneys of record on appeal.

14th & Dravus appealed, challenging an evidentiary ruling on ownership of the hedge and the trial court's refusal to grant it judgment as a matter of law. In an unpublished opinion filed March 23, 2026, Division One of the Washington Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that Rundquist's testimony gave the jury enough to find that the hedge and the property owner's neglect of it caused the hazardous sidewalk. The court denied reconsideration, and 14th & Dravus then petitioned the Washington Supreme Court to take up the case. The judgment remains on appeal while that petition is pending.