Marc Trachtman Law Wins MSJ for Apartment Complex
Facts: The City of Los Angeles is responsible for maintenance of hundreds of thousands of trees on City-owned property, but does not have the budget to maintain all of those trees. Here, a tree on City property fell and crushed a passing vehicle, seriously injuring the occupants. As is its practice, the City encouraged the Plaintiffs to name the adjacent landowner, in this case an apartment complex, as a defendant. The City then Cross-Complained against the apartment complex. Marc Trachtman Law represented the apartment complex.
Marc Trachtman Law (via John Roddy, Esq. and Timothy Smith, Esq.) moved for summary judgment on the ground that the apartment complex had no duty to maintain the subject tree and did not exercise possession, control or maintenance over the subject tree.
Outcome: Summary judgment was granted for the apartment complex. The City ended up paying more than $2,000,000 to resolve this claim.
