California supreme Court holds a written release in a cycling injury case does not prevent a suit by the cyclist against the city
Given that I spend most of my hours involved in liability, release issues, bicycle accident cases, and government tort cases, I felt that this was a very significant case to discuss in the cycling community.
The case is Whitehead v. City of Oakland and was decided by the California supreme Court on May 1st, 2025. It was an appeal from the trial court that granted a summary judgment motion in favor of the City which was then upheld on appeal.
A number of different entities filed amicus briefs in the case, including the California Bicycle Coalition on behalf of the plaintiff.
The plaintiff suffered a traumatic brain injury in March of 2017 while participating in a group training ride for the AIDS ride. He was riding downhill on Skyline boulevard in Oakland in a rather rural area with no other riders nearby and his front wheel went down into a large deep pothole near the center of the lane and he flipped over and hit the rear of his head on the pavement.
Earlier that day before the training ride, he signed a release form releasing all course or facility owners which could include state and local governmental entities and was warned in the release that using public streets can contain hazards such as broken pavement.
Interestingly, there had been a number of cases decided under California Civil code section 1668 which has since 1872 provided that “all contracts which have for their object directly or indirectly to exempt anyone from responsibility for his own fraud or willful injury to the person or property of another or violation of law, whether willful or negligent are against the policy of the law”
For many years, courts have used another supreme Court case Tunkl v Regents of University of California, a 1963 supreme Court case in California, which since that time has been used to evaluate whether or not releases involved or did not involve transactions “affecting the public interest” which was often used to defeat challenges to releases in cycling cases because cycling in general did not “affect the public interest”
What was significant in the Whitehead case was that the court said that the Tunkl case was only a framework to decide “common law” negligence cases. That was differentiated from the current case because the current case involved a violation of a “statutory duty”, namely Government code section 835, which provides that a public entity is liable for injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property if the plaintiff establishes that the property was in the dangerous condition at the time of the injury. There are also other requirements such as constructive notice, foreseeable risk, etc. Although those issues were not raised in this appeal.
The only issue for this court to decide was whether or not a release prior to an accident could relieve the city of its “statutory duty” under government code section 835. The court held that the factors in the Tunkl decision were not involved here because that case was only to be applied in situations in which there was a “common law” negligence claim which was not the case here.
The court relied heavily on Capri v. LA fitness where the plaintiff alleged that the club had allowed algae to grow near the pool in violation of state and local health and safety laws and that the statutory code violations proximately caused him to fall. The court in that case agreed, finding that the release did not bar his case
The court also relied heavily on Williams v. County of Sonoma. A 2020 case (that I had argued should continue to remain published as government entities tried to de-publish it) where the Court held the county owed duty to maintain safe roads for all foreseeable uses including bicycling. That case also involved a pothole, similar to another case I was litigating at the time.
The court looked at the legislative history of section 1668 And felt that it only directly applied to violations of statutory law, not common law claims and that for common law claims the correct analysis was to apply the Tunkl analysis.
The government entities also heavily relied upon Okura v. USCF a 1986 case in which a racer was injured when his bike hit loose debris as he was crossing railroad tracks during a bicycle race. That particular release also released municipalities, but the court in that case upheld the release. However, the court did not analyze the release specifically with respect to the city in that case. It was also important to point out that the only cause of action in Okura was for common law negligence, not a violation of government code section 835 as in this case.
The city also tried to argue that Government code section 835 did not require it to take any particular action in this case with respect to maintaining roads or streets. However, no authority was cited for that assertion and under prior case law. It was clear that under section 835 public entities owed members of the public a duty not to maintain public premises in a dangerous condition.
So the California supreme Court in Whitehead ruled that the release was not a bar to the plaintiff's case against the city of Oakland. However, the case will be remanded to the lower court so that further litigation can take place to determine whether or not the government entity has an immunity under the government code or whether it had notice of the dangerous condition under section 835 as well as a host of other legal and factual issues.
Of course, the government entities argued that trying to keep roadways in a safe condition was going to be too expensive. But the court noted that a number of other states held similarly to this case and there were no floodgates opening in those States with respect to cases against government entities for dangerous conditions.
The court also did not decide whether section 1668 necessarily invalidated releases of claims arising from every statutory violation. And again any such statutory violation would have had to have been a direct cause of the plaintiff's injury as in Whitehead.
The court simply held that the city sought to enforce a release to preclude an action that allegedly arose from a violation of its statutory duty to maintain safe roadways for the public and the court determined that such a release violates section 1668.
Concluding Thoughts
What is going to be most interesting going forward is to see if the city's arguments made at the hearing are going to come to fruition and whether California government entities (cities, counties) are now going to make it more difficult for entities and bike clubs that want to sponsor fun rides or races, to hold those events. It may be even more likely that clubs or event sponsors will need to obtain insurance in favor of the government entities (as they normally have been required to do in the past) in case the release is not upheld as to the government entity.
This case will not affect injured cyclists who are not signing releases. They simply have a right to file suit against the government entity as there is no release involved and the government entity has available to it all of its statutory immunities regarding dangerous condition of public property.
What will also be interesting is the interplay between the various potential defendants that have been released by a release and which ones had statutory duties that pertain to the accident and which ones do not. And only time will tell whether or not these government entities (or other non governmental entities) that are now on the hook without the benefit of the release will be able to go after other entities involved in the race (but effectively released), such as sponsors or potentially equipment manufacturers of the bikes or other devices that the plaintiff’s are using at the time of the accident.
In some respects this is no different than a typical product liability Defendant. Those defendants cannot benefit from pre-injury liability releases because product liability claims are not waivable via a release in most states. That is established law in California for some years now.
