Ackerman v. City of West Hollywood: Fountain Avenue and the Case for Safer Streets

By David Gammill, California trial attorney · Last reviewed: October 22, 2026

On July 10, 2025, Blake Ackerman, a 27-year-old lawyer, was riding his bicycle west on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood when a driver struck him from behind and kept going. He died a short time later. His parents have sued both the driver and the City of West Hollywood. The claim against the City is simple to state: the City had known for years that Fountain Avenue was dangerous for people on bicycles, had written that down in its own reports, had planned the fix, and had not built it. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers represents the Ackerman family. This page explains the case, the record behind it, and why we believe it matters beyond one street.

The Bottom Line

• What happened: Blake Ackerman was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding lawfully on Fountain Avenue, a street the City itself describes as designed for the “fearless” cyclist only.
• What the City knew: The City’s own report counted 35 severe-injury crashes and 5 deaths on its stretch of Fountain between 2013 and 2024, and found that 36 percent of West Hollywood’s fatal crashes happened on a street that makes up 4 percent of its roads.
• What the lawsuit claims: Negligence against the driver, and a dangerous condition of public property against the City under Government Code section 835, plus wrongful death.
• What the City says: It denies every allegation and has raised 18 defenses, several of which blame Blake for his own death.
• What comes next: Discovery is under way. The City is expected to ask the court to dismiss the case before trial, likely in 2027. On October 19, 2026, the City Council voted to keep the safer Fountain Avenue design it approved after Blake’s death, and construction is now expected to begin before the end of 2026.

Update, October 22, 2026. At its October 19 meeting, the West Hollywood City Council voted 3 to 2 against a motion to remove the protected bike lanes from the Fountain Avenue project and keep the street parking, according to the Beverly Press. The project stands as approved in September 2025. The City says construction is expected to start before the end of this year. We will keep this page current as the case and the street change.

What Happened on Fountain Avenue

Blake Ackerman grew up in the area. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School, served as vice president of his undergraduate class at USC, and finished Loyola Law School in 2023. He clerked for a judge on the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals and externed for a federal judge in the Central District of California. In the summer of 2025 he had just started as a litigation associate at a major law firm in Century City.

On the evening of July 10, 2025, he was riding west on Fountain Avenue. Just past Gardner Street, a silver BMW hit him from behind. The complaint alleges the car was traveling roughly 45 to 50 miles per hour on a street posted at 35. Blake was thrown to the ground. People nearby called 911 and tried to help. He did not survive.

The driver did not stop. Five days later, a tip from a member of the public led to the arrest of Douglas Morton Adams, who has been charged with felony hit-and-run driving resulting in death or serious injury. He has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The criminal case is separate from the family’s civil case and is handled by the Los Angeles County District Attorney, not by our firm.

In the weeks that followed, the West Hollywood Bicycle Coalition, Streets Are For Everyone, and Blake’s family placed a white-painted “ghost bike” at the spot where he was struck, held a vigil, and marched to City Hall to ask for safer streets. Shortly after the crash, the City lowered the speed limit on Fountain from 35 to 30.

What the City Knew About Fountain Avenue

The danger on Fountain Avenue was not a secret. It was documented in the City’s own records for years before Blake was killed. That documentation is the heart of the family’s case against the City, and it is why this page carries so many numbers. Each one comes from a City document.

What the City’s records say	Where it comes from
35 severe-injury crashes and 5 deaths on the West Hollywood segment of Fountain Avenue from 2013 through 2024, which the City calls three times higher than the adjacent segments in Los Angeles.	City of West Hollywood staff report on the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project, September 15, 2025
36 percent of West Hollywood’s fatal crashes occurred on Fountain Avenue, which is 4 percent of the City’s roadway network.	Same staff report
About 35,000 vehicles a day, with speeds averaging 39 miles per hour and recorded above 60 at night; nearly two thirds of the trips neither start nor end in West Hollywood.	Same staff report
Fountain Avenue is “designed for the ‘fearless’ cyclist only,” because high traffic volumes and speeds are paired with no dedicated bicycle facility.	City of West Hollywood project page, “Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project,” Bicycle Conditions section
Motor vehicle collisions along the corridor are highest at Fountain Avenue and Gardner Street, the intersection where Blake was killed.	City Street Design Concept Plan, January 2024, as cited in the complaint
Fountain is a designated bicycle route that “only has sharrows,” which “many drivers do not understand, and bicyclists may not feel safe utilizing.”	City Council report, March 2021, as cited in the complaint
The City’s 2017 Pedestrian and Bicycle Mobility Plan called for dedicated bike lanes on Fountain. When the plan was adopted, the Council removed the Fountain bike lanes and kept only short-term pedestrian measures.	City Pedestrian and Bicycle Mobility Plan, adopted May 2017, as cited in the complaint
In 2019 the Council approved bike lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard between Doheny Drive and Almont Drive, closing a gap in the bike network within about two years.	Same March 2021 report, as cited in the complaint
In November 2022 the Council voted unanimously for a Fountain Avenue design with protected bike lanes. The street was unchanged when Blake was killed two and a half years later.	Same staff report; City project page, Corridor Vision section

A “sharrow” is a painted bicycle symbol with two chevrons on a regular traffic lane. It tells drivers and cyclists to share the lane. It does not separate them. On the westbound side of Fountain just past Gardner, the shared lane also narrows where curbside parking begins, and the complaint alleges the block is poorly lit after dark. That is the stretch where Blake was hit.

Put the pieces together and the picture is this: for at least eight years, the City knew Fountain was its most dangerous street for its size, knew that paint alone was not protecting cyclists, knew how to build protected lanes because it had done so elsewhere, had voted for them on Fountain, and had not built them.

What the Lawsuit Asks

The family filed the complaint on January 5, 2026, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It is brought both in the family’s own right and on behalf of Blake’s estate; the person who carries on the claims a deceased person could have brought is called the successor-in-interest. It brings three claims.

Negligence against the driver. A driver owes everyone on the road a duty to drive at a safe and lawful speed and to watch for cyclists who have the right of way. The complaint alleges Mr. Adams breached that duty.

Dangerous condition of public property against the City. California does not let a person sue a city for just any injury on a public street. Government Code section 835 sets the test. The family must show that Fountain Avenue was in a dangerous condition when Blake was hurt, that the condition caused his death, that the kind of harm was foreseeable, and that the City either created the condition or knew about it long enough to fix it. The years of City reports described above are the family’s evidence on that last point.

Wrongful death. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, a parent may bring a claim for the loss of a child’s love, companionship, comfort, and support. That claim belongs to Blake’s parents in their own right.

The complaint asks a jury to decide the case. It does not ask jurors to choose between the driver and the City. California law lets a jury find that more than one party contributed to the same harm and assign each a share of the responsibility.

How the City Responded

The City filed its answer on March 23, 2026. It denies every allegation in the complaint, denies that Fountain Avenue was dangerous, and denies that the family was damaged “at all.” It then lists 18 affirmative defenses.

Several of them place the blame on Blake. The answer says he was “careless, reckless and negligent.” It says he assumed the risk. It says any danger on Fountain was “open and obvious” to him. It says he may not have been using the street for its intended purpose, and that his “unreasonable and improper use” of the road was the sole cause of the family’s loss. One defense attributes the crash to “an irresistible, superhuman act which no person can control.” Another says the City disclaimed all warranties, although no warranty is at issue.

Some of this is boilerplate. Defense lawyers routinely plead every defense that might later matter, and it would be unfair to judge a party’s position on the day it files an answer. Discovery will show which of these defenses the City actually intends to stand on. But the answer does tell us where the case is headed: the City will argue that the driver is to blame, that Blake is to blame, and that the street had nothing to do with it.

The defense that matters most is called design immunity. Government Code section 830.6, one of the immunities the City has pleaded, protects a public entity from liability for an injury caused by the plan or design of a public improvement if the design was approved in advance by the responsible body and there was any reasonable basis for approving it. It is a powerful defense, and cities win cases on it. We expect the City to ask the court for summary judgment on this ground, probably in 2027. If the court agrees with the City, the claim against West Hollywood could end without a jury ever hearing it. We think the record described above answers the defense, because the City’s own documents show it recognized the danger and had already decided the design needed to change. A judge will decide whether we are right.

What Is Changing on Fountain Avenue

On September 15, 2025, two months after Blake’s death, the City Council approved Phase 1 of the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project. Phase 1 will reduce Fountain to one vehicle lane in each direction, install bicycle lanes separated from traffic by concrete curbs, add high-visibility crosswalks, and repave the street. About 210 of the street’s roughly 337 curbside parking spaces will be removed, with parking kept on the south side beside the bike lane. Phase 2, a full reconstruction of the street with wider sidewalks and rebuilt curb ramps, is in early planning.

On October 19, 2026, the Council took the question up again and voted 3 to 2 against a motion to drop the protected bike lanes and keep the parking. The design approved in 2025 stands. The City now expects construction to begin before the end of 2026, with completion estimated in early spring 2027.

We support these changes. They are the changes the City’s own planners had been describing for years. The family’s position is not that the City should have predicted the unpredictable. It is that the City should do what it already knew to do, and should have done it sooner.

Where the Case Stands

Date	Event
July 10, 2025	Blake Ackerman is struck and killed on Fountain Avenue near Gardner Street.
July 2025	Douglas Morton Adams is arrested five days after the crash and later charged with felony hit-and-run resulting in death or serious injury. He pleads not guilty.
September 15, 2025	West Hollywood City Council approves Phase 1 of the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project.
January 5, 2026	The family files the civil complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court (Case No. 26SMCV00014, Santa Monica Courthouse).
March 23, 2026	The City of West Hollywood files its answer, denying all allegations and asserting 18 affirmative defenses.
September 3, 2026	Case management conference. No substantive rulings; the case moves into discovery.
October 19, 2026	The City Council votes 3 to 2 to keep the protected bike lanes in the project.
Late 2026 (expected)	Phase 1 construction on Fountain Avenue begins.
2027 (expected)	The City is expected to move for summary judgment on design immunity.

Discovery is under way. The family can demand the City’s records on Fountain Avenue and question, under oath, the officials and staff who made decisions about the street. Because the criminal case against the driver is pending, he may decline to answer questions in the civil case under the Fifth Amendment. That does not slow the family’s discovery against the City. We will update this page as the case moves.

Why This Case Matters

Most of what we do is private. A family is hurt, a case is brought, and it is resolved without anyone outside the courtroom knowing the details. This case is different, because the record is public and the question at its center affects everyone who rides a bicycle or crosses a street in a California city.

Cities make design choices. They decide whether a bike route gets paint or a curb, whether a street carries two lanes or one, and how long a known problem waits for a fix. Those choices are made in reports and council meetings, and they are usually made with good intentions and limited budgets. But when a city writes down, year after year, that a street is dangerous, and then a person dies on that street in exactly the way the reports predicted, the law gives that person’s family a way to ask a jury whether the city should have acted. That is what this case is about.

Whatever the court decides on the City’s immunity defense, the Fountain Avenue that Blake rode on will not exist much longer. The protected lanes are coming. We believe the public attention this case has drawn, and the family’s refusal to let it be treated as just another file, are part of the reason they are coming now. If the case does nothing else, it will have helped make sure the next rider on Fountain Avenue is protected by more than paint.

Coverage and Public Records

• Complaint, Ackerman v. Adams et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 26SMCV00014, filed January 5, 2026. Read the complaint (PDF)
• Defendant City of West Hollywood’s Answer to Complaint, filed March 23, 2026. Read the answer (PDF)
• City of West Hollywood staff report, “Update on the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project,” September 15, 2025 City Council agenda, item E.1. Read the staff report (PDF)
• City of West Hollywood, Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project page. engage.weho.org/fountain
• Beverly Press, “WeHo Council upholds Fountain Ave. project,” October 21, 2026. Read the article
• WEHOonline, “Blake Ackerman’s Family Attorney Speaks to WEHOonline About Grief, Blame and What Comes Next,” September 12, 2026. Read the article
• WEHO Times, “Family of Cyclist Killed on Fountain Avenue is Suing West Hollywood Over Roadway Safety,” August 2026. Read the article
• WEHOonline, “West Hollywood Reflects on Blake Ackerman Vigil.” Read the article
• Beverly Press, “WeHo City Council OKs Fountain Ave. bike lanes,” September 18, 2025. Read the article

Future filings in the case will be added to this list as they are made.

Talk to us about a dangerous-road or wrongful death case. Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers represents families across Los Angeles County and the South Bay in wrongful death and dangerous public property cases. Consultations are free, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. Call 310-750-4149 or request a free case evaluation.

This page describes a pending case based on the public court record and public City documents. Allegations in a complaint are claims to be proven, not findings. Nothing here is a prediction of the outcome, and every case is different.

This page is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice for any specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes are fact-specific; consult a licensed California attorney about your own circumstances. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.