After hefty injury payouts in Davis, all Yolo County residents could feel impact
A recent $18 million settlement between the city of Davis and a resident over a slip-and-fall lawsuit is the second multimillion-dollar claim filed against the city this year, following a $24 million wrongful death lawsuit the city lost in March.
But Davis taxpayers aren’t on the hook for all $42 million. The city will be responsible for a small portion of each claim, then the Yolo County Public Agency Risk Management Insurance Authority, YCPARMIA, will take over. A so-called joint powers authority, YCPARMIA allows its 32 members — all public entities in Yolo County — to pay into a risk pool that ensures sizable payouts like those in Davis don’t come directly from city coffers.
As a result, the impact of the jury award and settlement is expected to be felt by residents countywide, Barbara Lubben, executive Director of YCPARMIA, said. The cost of public agency liability insurance has quintupled in recent years, largely off of substantial verdicts and settlements like those in Davis, at a time when budgets around the county are already stretched thin.
“There’s a crisis in liability funding right now,” Lubben said.
Neither the public agency risk pools nor the insurance companies they buy from anticipated the skyrocketing costs, which end up trickling down to YCPARMIA’s 32 member agencies.
“With the quintupling of excess insurance premiums, there have been significant increases in what then gets passed down to my members in terms of rate increases,” Lubben said. “And they do have to cut other things to pay for it.”
YCPARMIA’s old insurance provider, the California Joint Powers Risk Management Authority, which is responsible for the $24 million wrongful death verdict, had never encountered a jury verdict of that size, Lubben said.
Substantial jury verdicts like the one in Davis drive costs up for public risk pools when they shop for their own insurance policies, known as “reinsurance,” said Tony Giles, general manager of the California Joint Powers Risk Management Authority, a risk pool for about 50 northern California cities.
“Where it impacts taxpayers is not so much in an increase in taxes, but in a reduction in services,” Lubben said. “And I think that is a very real and current impact.”
How the substantial claims will impact Davis’ budget is not yet clear. A city spokesperson declined to comment on the impact to city services or on the city’s plan to protect itself against similarly expensive liabilities in the future.
The settlement reached in the slip-and-fall case indicates that the city and YCPARMIA expected the potential costs of defending the lawsuit and paying a potential jury verdict to exceed $18 million.
City staff are looking at ways to better manage hazards like damaged trees and sidewalks without exceeding budgetary constraints. But in a staff report from August they acknowledged that “not all identified deficiencies can or will be addressed in the same year they are identified due to the current limitations of the Street Division,” referring to the city department responsible for maintaining Davis’ roads, sidewalks and bike paths.
In general, any delay between being made aware of a hazard and repairing it could leave a city vulnerable to further claims, Giles said.
YCPARMIA’s current insurer is PRISM, one of the country’s largest risk pools whose membership includes about 90% of California counties, 70% of California cities and dozens of other special districts and joint powers authorities. Like YCPARMIA does for member agencies, PRISM covers liabilities after a certain threshold.
YCPARMIA’s PRISM policy ensures their members are also covered by several layers of reinsurance that spread the risk across ten different insurance companies. PRISM will cover YCPARMIA’s liability after their $1 million deductible, up to $5 million. After that other insurance companies will shoulder the costs.
But those costs have ballooned in recent years.
Giles has seen the increasing costs over his seven years managing CJPRMA. Now, instead of two carriers, CJPRMA works with nine.
“We were able to buy all of our reinsurance from two carriers,” he said. “But as claims got more and more expensive and as the risk grew greater, insurers started writing lower limits.”
Lubben has seen the same thing.
“There’s been some increase in what we have to charge members to fund the amount of risk we retain,” she said. “Where there is a very big impact is the money has to come from somewhere.”
“It doesn’t just impact risk pools,” Giles agreed. “It fundamentally impacts public agencies and their ability to deliver services.”
The multimillion-dollar payouts in Davis may not even be the biggest liability YCPARMIA will face this year. Their membership includes the Yolo County government and the Esparto Fire Protection District, both of which knew about the Esparto fireworks facility before July’s deadly explosion and may be named in future suits from neighbors or the families of victims.
Records indicate that Esparto fire chief Curtis Lawrence knew about the fireworks facility for years and conducted “site visits” but no formal safety inspections. Lawrence also told county agencies that the companies were operating safely, records show. The Yolo County Department of Community Services also knew about the fireworks for years and knew the facility did not have the necessary permits and plans on file with the county.
In September, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors redirected about $1.7 million to pay for the explosion investigation. The money will help cover the cost of hiring five new investigators to replace those reassigned to the Esparto investigation and any other potential expenses of a prosecution, like the need to hire more attorneys or convene a grand jury, Nikki Abaurrea, Chief Fiscal Officer for the District Attorney’s Office told the Board of Supervisors.
The expensive investigation and other high exposure incidents come at a time when public budgets in the county are already smarting. Local fire protection districts are at risk of collapse and Yolo County eliminated 52 positions earlier this year to lessen a budget deficit of nearly $40 million. For the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the county tapped its financial reserves for the first time in a decade and is considering raising taxes to balance the budget.
In June, county supervisors instructed staff to explore ways to raise revenue. Yolo County receives a smaller share of property tax revenue than nearly every other California county, Yolo County Chief Financial Officer Tom Haynes said at a November Board of Supervisors Meeting, where he laid out options including a new countywide sales tax, a new parcel tax, raising cannabis taxes and implementing parking fees in county lots.
This story was originally published December 3, 2025 at 2:50 PM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Yolo County has been named in a lawsuit related to the Esparto fireworks explosion.
