Greuel faults DWP for bypassing bids on lobbying contracts

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repeatedly bypassed its competitive bidding process when it awarded $480,000 in contracts to lobby Sacramento decision-makers, according to a report issued by City Controller Wendy Greuel.

DWP executives issued four no-bid contracts for state lobbying over the last two years, two of them to Mercury Public Affairs, a firm that includes former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez as one of its partners. No public debate or vote by the utility's five-member Board of Commissioners was required under DWP contracting rules because each agreement was $150,000 or less.

Greuel, who is running for mayor in the March 5 election, said the city utility had "lax controls" over the lobbying contracts and failed to require that two of the firms prepare reports showing what they had accomplished. Mercury also was paid $50,000 for a month of work to help secure passage of legislation on power plant upgrades that had been withdrawn on the first day of the firm's contract, the report found.

---

FOR THE RECORD:
DWP lobbyist: An article in the Jan. 3 LATExtra section about DWP lobbying practices said the agency had been paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez in 2009. The article should have specified that Montañez was being paid $15,000 per month.

---

"DWP should have terminated" the contract, Greuel wrote.

The inquiry, which was conducted with help from the city Ethics Commission, was launched last year after Greuel's office received a tip alleging that the lobbying work was awarded in exchange for favors. But no evidence of "a 'pay to play' arrangement" was found, her report said.

Mercury received DWP lobbying contracts worth $50,000 in 2010 and $150,000 in 2011, both focused on state government. The firm also received a no-bid, nine-month contract worth $141,000 in 2010 for lobbying at the federal level, which was not examined in the controller's report.

The DWP said the no-bid contracts were reviewed and approved by the city's lawyers. The three lobbying firms helped shape costly state regulations dealing with greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of ocean plant life caused by coastal power plants, utility officials said.

"Their effective advocacy contributed to favorable outcomes that will save LADWP's customers in excess of a billion dollars," the DWP said in a statement.

Mercury Managing Director Roger Salazar said his firm provided strategy for dealing with water quality regulators, as well as state lawmakers. "The legislative process doesn't always end with the pulling of a bill," he added.

The DWP's hiring practices for outside lobbyists attracted scrutiny in 2009 after high-level officials proposed a contract worth up to $2.4 million with Conservation Strategy Group — a Sacramento-based firm that planned to use Mercury and a second company as subcontractors.

The deal would have included the involvement of Nuñez, author of the state's landmark 2006 climate change law. But it was scuttled after DWP commissioners raised questions about the cost. The agency already was paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez, a former Assembly member who is now a City Council candidate.

DWP officials subsequently began using simple purchase orders instead of competitive bidding procedures to hire lobbying firms. The utility awarded a one-year, $130,000 agreement to Weideman Group in 2010 and a one-year, $150,000 agreement with Conservation Strategy Group in 2011.

Mercury received its $150,000 contract in April 2011, during the same week that Nuñez contributed $3,000 to three of the mayor's legal defense funds and $1,000 to a separate officeholder account belonging to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The defense funds were set up to pay nearly $42,000 in ethics fines levied against Villaraigosa for accepting free tickets to sports and cultural events.

Salazar said there was no link between the contracts and the donations from Nuñez. "Any insinuation that they are connected is absurd and irresponsible," he said.

Last month, the DWP's five-member board awarded a Sacramento lobbying contract worth $1 million annually to KP Public Affairs. That vote was taken after a competitive search process.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

Read More..

Dozens of Syrians Killed in Explosions Around Damascus

Andoni Lubaki/Associated Press

Rebel fighters patrol a neighborhood in Aleppo on Wednesday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Dozens of Syrians were killed or wounded in an explosion at a gas station east of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Wednesday, and explosions in another Damascus suburb killed at least six people and wounded many more, including women and children, according to videos and reports from antigovernment activists.

The violence came as the United Nations released a study showing that more than 60,000 people had been killed in Syria’s 22-month-old conflict, a third higher than estimates by antigovernment activist groups.

Also on Wednesday, the family of James Foley, a reporter for the Global Post Web site, announced that Mr. Foley had been kidnapped on Nov. 22 by unidentified gunmen in northwest Syria. Mr. Foley had survived an abduction in Libya while covering the conflict there.

A recent flurry of diplomatic activity by Russia, the United Nations’ special envoy and others aimed at finding a political solution appeared to founder in recent days as neither Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, nor his opponents expressed a willingness to make concessions to end the bloody conflict.

The explosion near Damascus, which witnesses blamed on an airstrike, took place in a heavily contested suburban area. It hit a gas station where scores of people had lined up for fuel, which had just become available there after about a month, residents said. Videos posted by antigovernment activists showed charred bodies.

One man, using the nickname Abu Fuad, said in a telephone interview that he had just filled up his gas tank and was driving away when he heard the screech of fighter jets.

He was less than a quarter mile away when he heard the explosions, he said.

“There were many cars waiting their turn,” he said. “Yesterday, we heard that the government sent fuel to the gas station here, so all the people around came to fill up their cars.”

In a sign of the depth of distrust the conflict has spawned, Abu Fuad suggested that restocking the station was a government ruse. “They sent fuel as a trap,” he said.

In northern Syria, rebels used rockets to attack the Taftanaz military airport, a long-contested area in the province of Idlib, activists reported. Rebels have also stepped up attacks on airports in the neighboring province of Aleppo, trying to disrupt the warplanes and helicopters that government forces increasingly rely on for attacks, and even for supply lines, in the north.

The United Nations study suggested that the human toll of the war was even greater than previously estimated. Two days ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a rebel group that tracks the war from Britain, reported 45,000 deaths, mostly civilian, since the conflict began in March 2011.

“The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking,” the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said in a statement after her agency released the study.

“We must not compound the existing disaster by failing to prepare for the inevitable — and very dangerous — instability that will occur when the conflict ends,” she added. To avoid repeating the experience of collapsed states like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, she said, “serious planning needs to get under way immediately, not just to provide humanitarian aid to all those who need it, but to protect all Syrian citizens from extrajudicial reprisals and acts of revenge.”

The study’s surprisingly high death toll reflected only those killings in which victims had been identified by their full name, and the date and location of their death had been recorded, leaving the possibility of many more dead.

Independent researchers compiled reports of more than 147,000 killings in Syria’s conflict from seven sources, including the government. When duplicates were removed, there remained a list of 59,648 people killed between March 2011 and the end of November.

Meanwhile, John Foley, James Foley’s father, stressed that his son was an “objective journalist” and issued a plea to his captors to contact the family so that they can work for his release.

“We want Jim to come safely home, or at least we need to speak with him to know he’s O.K.,” John Foley said. “Jim is an objective journalist and we appeal for the release of Jim unharmed. To the people who have Jim, please contact us so we can work together toward his release.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

Read More..

Apple reportedly considering Waze acquisition to help fix iOS Maps app

Title Post: Apple reportedly considering Waze acquisition to help fix iOS Maps app
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/apple-reportedly-considering-waze-acquisition-to-help-fix-ios-maps-app/
Link To Post : Apple reportedly considering Waze acquisition to help fix iOS Maps app
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Robin Roberts Reunites with Her Dog 100 Days After Bone Marrow Transplant

People Pets

01/02/2013 at 03:30 PM EST

This may have been the best New Year's yet for Robin Roberts.

Exactly 100 days after successfully undergoing a bone marrow transplant, the Good Morning America host was reunited with her beloved dog, KJ, just days before ringing in 2013.

"Look who made it back for my 100 day celebration," she Tweeted on Dec. 29, with a photo of herself and KJ in a cuddly embrace. "We just keep staring at each [other] … can't believe she's finally home."

Roberts, who had the transplant Sept. 20, suffers from a rare blood disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome. The 100-day mark is a criticial milestone in her long recovery and she celebrated it on Twitter earlier that day.

"Every morning I mark the day post my bone marrow transplant. Today I reached a major milestone ... Day 100! Blessings..XO," she wrote.

In November, Roberts said that with each day comes a newfound strength.

"It's a journey that kind of zigzags, and there are complications and things like that, but I feel good. I feel stronger every day," she told her sister and donor, Sally-Ann Roberts, in an interview.

With KJ now by her side, her support system is even larger.

"Couldn't resist sharing one more photo … KJ already feeling right at home," she wrote, with a photo of the dog snoozing on her leg. "So happy to have the lil girlback."

Read More..

Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

Read More..

Photographer following Justin Bieber Ferrari killed

Los Angeles police said the driver who hit a photographer after the paparazzo took photos of Justin Bieber's Ferrari is not likely to face charges.

The photographer died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. A friend of the photographer told KCAL-TV Channel 9 that he was not a professional.

The incident took place on Sepulveda Boulevard near Getty Center Drive shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. A friend of Bieber was driving the sports
car when it was pulled over on the 405 Freeway by the California Highway Patrol for a traffic stop, according to LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez.

A CHP officer directed the driver of Bieber's car off the freeway and onto Sepulveda.

The photographer arrived at the scene, got out of his car and crossed
Sepulveda to take photos. He was hit by a car as he went back across
the street to his own car, the sources said.

The sources said the photographer was not crossing in a crosswalk and the driver was fully cooperating with authorities.

The paparazzi have tracked the driving habits of Bieber, 18, and the
Los Angeles city attorney's office has been unsuccessful in its attempt
to use a novel state law to limit their pursuits.

Judge Thomas Rubinson ruled in November the state law did not
pass constitutional muster in a case against Paul Raef, a photographer
who sped on the 101 Freeway last year to capture Bieber receiving a
traffic citation.

Passed in 2010, the law punishes paparazzi driving dangerously to
obtain images they intend to sell. But Rubinson said the law violated
1st Amendment protections, potentially affecting wedding photographers
or those speeding to events where celebrities are present.

ALSO:

Son of Clippers owner Donald Sterling found dead in Malibu

'Feud' behind man's body found encased in concrete, police say

Read More..

Clashes in West Bank Injure Palestinians

JERUSALEM — Violent clashes broke out on Tuesday between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a village in the northern West Bank, leaving up to 30 Palestinians injured, after an undercover Israeli force entered the village to arrest a wanted militant, according to Palestinian news reports and the Israeli military.

The military said two soldiers were wounded, neither seriously, by rocks thrown by Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules, said the purpose of Tuesday’s raid on the village, Tamoun, was to arrest a resident, Murad Bani Odeh, who she said was suspected of being a terrorist. Both the military and Palestinian reports identified Mr. Odeh, who was captured by the Israeli forces, as a member of Islamic Jihad, an extremist organization.

In the raid, an undercover force, reportedly disguised as vegetable merchants, entered the village first. When youths started throwing stones and a violent riot broke out, regular forces came in and dispersed the crowd with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. The military spokeswoman denied Palestinian reports that the soldiers also used live fire.

The confrontation was the latest manifestation of the simmering unrest and disturbances that have spread across the West Bank since mid-November, when Israel embarked on a fierce eight-day military campaign against the rocket-launching infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the militant group Hamas.

It also comes after years of stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, an issue that has re-emerged in recent days as an Israeli election issue, with Israelis scheduled to go to the polls on Jan. 22.

The fate of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — territories that the Palestinians claim for a future state — is always a core, if sometimes underlying, issue for Israeli voters. Until now, the leaders of the two largest political forces, the rightist Likud-Beiteinu joint ticket and the center-left Labor Party, had mostly avoided the subject, aware of public fatigue and skepticism about the prospects of a peace deal and preferring to refocus the debate onto security and socioeconomic issues.

But the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, a veteran politician who is now supposed to stay out of politics and play a mostly symbolic role, intervened in the election campaign on Sunday, telling a large group of visiting Israeli ambassadors that he considered the president of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to be a partner for peace.

“No one will change my opinion about Abu Mazen,” he said in broadcast remarks, referring to Mr. Abbas by his popular name, “even if they say I cannot express it because I’m the president.” Israel, he added, “must complete the task of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians without further delay.”

The remarks infuriated Likud-Beiteinu, which issued a sharp statement condemning Mr. Peres for expressing what it called a “personal political opinion that is disconnected from the Israeli public’s stance regarding Abu Mazen, the peace refusenik.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud-Beiteinu, who has endorsed a two-state solution under certain conditions, responded on Tuesday with a statement that called for extreme caution and an Israeli foot on the brakes.

“In Egypt, the regime has been replaced, in Syria the regime is being shaken and this could also happen in the Palestinian Authority areas in Judea and Samaria,” he said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. “Everyone knows that Hamas could take over the Palestinian Authority,” he continued. “It could happen after an agreement; it could happen before an agreement, like it happened in Gaza. Therefore, as opposed to the voices that I have heard recently urging me to run forward, to make concessions and to withdraw, I think that the diplomatic process must be managed responsibly and sagaciously and not in undue haste.”

There has been a palpable rise in incidents of stone-throwing and firebombing by Palestinians against Israeli vehicles on West Bank roads, and an increase in localized clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and soldiers, according to Israeli officials. On Monday night, the military said, an Israeli civilian bus traveling south of Hebron was shot at. There were no injuries.

The spike in unrest comes after four years of relative stability in the West Bank, and it has led some Israeli commentators to speculate about the chances of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Israeli and Palestinian officials say privately that they have no evidence of plans for a full-blown uprising, though nobody could rule out a spontaneous outburst triggered by some unforeseen incident. Mr. Abbas has stated publicly that he will not support an armed uprising on his watch.

In the meantime, the Israeli military says it has been trying to balance proactive counterterrorism measures — like widespread arrests of militants belonging to Hamas and other armed groups — with a policy of restraint when faced with rioters, to try to prevent Palestinian fatalities and a subsequent spiral of violence.

Read More..

Len Goodman, Dancing with the Stars Judge, Marries Longtime Girlfriend

TV Watch

By Maggie Coughlan

01/01/2013 at 02:15 PM EST

From the judges' table to the altar!

Len Goodman of Dancing with the Stars tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Sue Barrett on Sunday in London.

The couple exchanged vows during a surprise ceremony in front of 30 family members and friends.

Goodman, 68, and Barrett, 47, have been together for more than 10 years.

"I've had a marvelous day and now my gorgeous Sue is the new Mrs. Goodman," the ballroom dancing expert tells the Daily Mail.

This is Goodman's third marriage.

Read More..

Clinton receiving blood thinners to dissolve clot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to recover in a New York hospital where she's being treated for a blood clot in her head.

Her doctors say blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery. Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said. The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remains a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age — and thereby health — would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health — and age — to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

Read More..

Ruling over bumper-car injury supports amusement park

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court, protecting providers of risky recreational activities from lawsuits, decided Monday that bumper car riders may not sue amusement parks over injuries stemming from the inherent nature of the attraction.

The 6-1 decision may be cited to curb liability for a wide variety of activities — such as jet skiing, ice skating and even participating in a fitness class, lawyers in the case said.

"This is a victory for anyone who likes fun and risk activities," said Jeffrey M. Lenkov, an attorney for Great America, which won the case.

But Mark D. Rosenberg, who represented a woman injured in a bumper car at the Bay Area amusement park, said the decision was bad for consumers.

"Patrons are less safe today than they were yesterday," Rosenberg said.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by Smriti Nalwa, who fractured her wrist in 2005 while riding in a bumper car with her 9-year-old son and being involved in a head-on collision. Rosenberg said Great America had told ride operators not to allow head-on collisions, but failed to ask patrons to avoid them.

The court said Nalwa's injury was caused by a collision with another bumper car, a normal part of the ride. To reduce all risk of injury, the ride would have to be scrapped or completely reconfigured, the court said.

"A small degree of risk inevitably accompanies the thrill of speeding through curves and loops, defying gravity or, in bumper cars, engaging in the mock violence of low-speed collisions," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for the majority. "Those who voluntarily join in these activities also voluntarily take on their minor inherent risks."

Monday's decision extended a legal doctrine that has limited liability for risky sports, such as football, to now include recreational activities.

"Where the doctrine applies to a recreational activity," Werdegar wrote, "operators, instructors and participants …owe other participants only the duty not to act so as to increase the risk of injury over that inherent in the activity."

Amusement parks will continue to be required to use the utmost care on thrill rides such as roller coasters, where riders surrender control to the operator. But on attractions where riders have some control, the parks can be held liable only if their conduct unreasonably raised the dangers.

"Low-speed collisions between the padded, independently operated cars are inherent in — are the whole point of — a bumper car ride," Werdegar wrote.

Parks that fail to provide routine safety measures such as seat belts, adequate bumpers and speed controls might be held liable for an injury, but operators should not be expected to restrict where a bumper car is bumped, the court said.

The justices noted that the state inspected the Great America rides annually, and the maintenance and safety staff checked on the bumper cars the day Nalwa broke her wrist. The ride was functioning normally.

Reports showed that bumper car riders at the park suffered 55 injuries — including bruises, cuts, scrapes and strains — in 2004 and 2005, but Nalwa's injury was the only fracture. Nalwa said her wrist snapped when she tried to brace herself by putting her hand on the dashboard.

Rosenberg said the injury stemmed from the head-on collision. He said the company had configured bumper rides in other parks to avoid such collisions and made the Santa Clara ride uni-directional after the lawsuit was filed.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard dissented, complaining that the decision would saddle trial judges "with the unenviable task of determining the risks of harm that are inherent in a particular recreational activity."

"Whether the plaintiff knowingly assumed the risk of injury no longer matters," Kennard said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Read More..