The City of Oakland will pay $7 million to the bicyclist Ty Whitehead, who was injured in 2017 due to a pothole, under a settlement. Let’s understand the settlement conditions and what this shows about the Oakland road conditions.
Oakland Pothole Injury Settlement
Bicyclist, Ty Whitehead, 58 years of age, suffered severe injuries after striking a dangerous pothole on Skyline Boulevard when he was cycling at an AIDS/LifeCycle Charity training ride in 2017. The bicyclist filed the case against the City of Oakland in 2018 following his catastrophic injury.
After years of long battle from his attorneys, Steven Kronenberg and Anthony Label, Ty Whitehead has finally gotten justice as the City of Oakland has agreed to settle the lawsuit and compensate him with $7 million.
This settlement is the largest road dangerous condition of public property settlement in the history of Oakland. This settlement also shed light on the Oakland road conditions for bicycles and on the infrastructure safety for the citizens.
What happened in the Oakland Pothole Injury Settlement?
The bicyclist filed the lawsuit against the City of Oakland for the dangerous road after his accident on Skyline Boulevard, when his bike was struck by a pothole and sent him flying over the handlebars. He was in the hospital for two weeks and hospitalized for a year, as the accident caused him serious brain injury.
He sued the city, where the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeals because all the riders, including Whitehead, signed a document during the charity event, stating that if any negligence caused harm during the event, the trip organizer and government would not be responsible.
The County Appeal was dismissed, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision in May 2025, saying the city cannot escape from the unsafe infrastructure claims. The California Supreme Court gave the decision on the Oakland Pothole Injury settlement of Whitehead with a 7-0 unanimous ruling.
The ruling allowed the bicyclist to take this case for trial; however, the City of Oakland opted to resolve the case without agreeing to any wrongdoing and end this long battle.
How did the injury affect the bicyclist’s life?
The bicyclist who suffered a severe injury in 2017 was hospitalized for two years and ended up with a permanent disability. The long-term brain injury has led him to leave his job in San Francisco as operations manager.
Today, he has difficulty walking and standing up, as his age is a barrier to his recovery as well. Now, due to his inability, he volunteered at the local SPCA, an animal rescue organization, and worked at a coffee shop.
His lifestyle and conditions were affected due to the pothole injury, so with this settlement, he can improve his life. The cyclist has also mentioned that this case was never about him, as it is about how dangerous the roads are and the authorities’ ignorance in fixing them.
What will be the impact of this Oakland Pothole settlement?
Oakland has had many pothole or public property cases lately. According to reports, the city has paid $27 million to people who got injured due to potholes from 2018 to 2023. A settlement of $6.5 million was resolved in 2023, where it was paid to Bruno Van Schoote for his spine injury, which he suffered over a crack on MacArthur Boulevard.
The report claims that the city of Oakland was not fixing the roads, and the infrastructure was not taken care of properly; for instance, some streets in the city were not paved for 80 years.
This ruling of the Supreme Court has shown that the city should not compromise with road safety and ensure that the roads are safe for the citizens.
The attorney of Whitehead says he hopes that the authority will now become serious about the safe infrastructure to prevent such accidents.
The city of Oakland records a high number of pothole injury settlements, which shows that they are behind in the plan to fix this issue and provide safe transport for the public. Hope this highest settlement will encourage the city to build and maintain safe infrastructure for public use.