California Court of Appeal Rules Bird Rides Owes Duty of Care Over Dangerously Parked Scooters
Won by McGee Lerer Ogrin.
In a landmark April 2023 ruling, California's Second District Court of Appeal reversed dismissal of a pedestrian trip-and-fall lawsuit, holding that Bird Rides owes a general duty of ordinary care over its dock-less scooters and can be sued when improperly parked scooters injure members of the public.
What happened
On an evening in 2019, Sara Hacala was walking on a Los Angeles sidewalk during holiday shopping when she tripped over a Bird electric scooter that was protruding from behind a trash can. She sustained serious physical injuries in the fall. Hacala and her daughter filed suit against Bird Rides, Inc. and the City of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles County Superior Court dismissed the case against Bird, accepting the company's argument that it bore no legal responsibility for how its dock-less scooters ended up parked on public sidewalks once riders finished their trips. McGee Lerer and Associates, representing Hacala, appealed that dismissal.
On appeal, attorneys Dean Ogrin and Rowena J. Dizon argued that Bird's business model, collecting GPS data on every scooter, setting terms of service for riders, and retaining the ability to remotely disable or reposition its fleet, gave the company meaningful control over where scooters ended up and the capacity to address dangerous parking situations.
The Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 3 agreed. In its April 10, 2023 opinion, the panel held that Bird owes a general duty of ordinary care under California Civil Code Section 1714. The court rejected any categorical exemption from liability, finding that Bird's operational capacity to monitor its fleet and screen renters placed it squarely within the reach of ordinary negligence law. As Catherine Lerer of McGee Lerer summarized to the Santa Monica Daily Press: 'Bird must pick up its poop.' The court was careful to note that the ruling does not make Bird automatically liable in every case, whether the duty was breached depends on the circumstances of each incident.
The appellate court reversed the dismissal of claims against Bird and remanded for further proceedings. The dismissal of claims against the City of Los Angeles was affirmed on government immunity grounds.
The decision drew attention across the micromobility industry as the first California appellate ruling to squarely address scooter company liability for improperly parked vehicles, and it opened the courthouse door for other pedestrians injured in similar circumstances.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from McGee Lerer Ogrin
All McGee Lerer Ogrin proven verdicts →McGee Lerer Ogrin represented 14 of the 124 survivors whose claims were resolved in a $122.5 million settlement with the City of Santa Monica over decades of child sexual abuse by a PAL volunteer the city failed to stop.
In November 2019, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge overruled demurrers filed by Lyft and the City of Santa Monica, finding that an 88-year-old woman who sustained five pelvic fractures after tripping over a Lyft scooter in a posted no-deployment zone had stated viable negligence and public-nuisance claims against both defendants.
Catherine Lerer of McGee Lerer, co-counseling with Costell & Cornelius, filed a class action in October 2018 against Bird, Lime, Xiaomi, and Segway on behalf of riders and pedestrians seriously injured by dockless e-scooters deployed across Los Angeles.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.