Judge Allows 88-Year-Old's Hip Fracture Suit Against Lyft and Santa Monica to Proceed

On September 24, 2018, Dorothy 'Dolly' Green, then 87 years old, was dropped off in a passenger loading zone in front of the Santa Monica Community College Emeritus campus. As she stepped onto the curb, she caught her foot on a Lyft electric scooter parked directly on the sidewalk and fell backward into the street.

Green sustained five fractures to her pelvis along with injuries to her hip and elbow, all of which required surgery. The loading zone where she fell had been designated a no-deployment zone under Santa Monica's Shared Mobility Pilot Program, which had launched just five days before the incident. Despite that designation, Lyft scooters were present in the zone and no enforcement action had been taken to remove them.

Catherine Lerer of McGee Lerer filed suit against Lyft, the City of Santa Monica, and the Santa Monica Community College District on Green's behalf. The complaint sought at least $500,000 in damages and alleged negligence and public nuisance. Both Lyft and the City moved to dismiss the case through demurrers, arguing they could not be held liable.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Theresa Traber disagreed. In her November 2019 ruling, Traber found that Lyft's practice of deploying dock-less scooters and permitting riders to leave them wherever they chose created a foreseeable safety risk. On the City, Traber wrote that Santa Monica's failure to impound scooters left in a no-deployment zone routinely used by older adults was 'an operational decision' rather than a protected basic policy choice -- a distinction that stripped the City of government-immunity protection at the pleading stage. Both demurrers were overruled and the case was allowed to proceed.

No public record of a final verdict or disclosed settlement in the Green matter has been identified. The 2019 ruling was nonetheless significant: it was among the earliest California superior court decisions holding that dock-less scooter operators and the municipalities that permit them can face civil liability when scooters are left in zones explicitly closed to them.