While in the recent past California courts have given wide deference to the principle that individual plaintiffs are entitled to their day in court despite admissibility issues at the summary judgment stage, that pendulum swing is now coming back around.

Courts are increasingly scrutinizing negligence claims against public entities at summary judgment. This trend can be seen in two distinct areas of law where liability hinges on a public entity having notice: either of a dangerous condition of public property or a school district’s liability for childhood sexual abuse cases.

Recent trial and appellate decisions across California, including the cases Edwin Sargenti v. City of Long Beach decided by the Second Appellate District in May 2026 and Rancho Cucamonga Central School District v. Superior Court of San Bernardino decided by the Fourth Appellate District in 2025, reflect a growing judicial reluctance to allow cases to proceed to a jury based on speculative, inferential, or inadmissible evidence of “notice.” Admissible evidence must direct juries to choose a seat on the seesaw of justice; otherwise, speculative or other inadmissible evidence forces juries to resolve legal disputes by the flip of a coin. The factfinder is entrusted to weigh admissible evidence so that a just and fair resolution can be achieved.

Dangerous Condition of Public Property

A claim for injury pursuant to Government Code § 835 must establish that the public entity had actual or constructive notice of the condition and knew or should have known of its dangerous character. This can be established through acts or omissions of a public entity employee who either created the condition or knew or should have known of the condition for a long enough period of time to have protected against it.

Typically, a plaintiff’s section 835 claim will only consist of allegations that the condition existed for a long enough period of time and the public entity was negligent for not noticing it. However, also typically, the only evidence a plaintiff can gather to establish such a claim consists of pure conjecture, for example, an unauthenticated screenshot of a Google image depicting the dangerous condition at least a year prior. This element of notice of a dangerous condition claim is the most difficult to overcome at the summary judgment stage.

On May 15, 2026, the Second District appellate court, in Edwin Sargenti v. City of Long Beach, held that evidence must be admissible at the summary judgment stage. Sargenti involved serious injury when a plaintiff riding an e-scooter encountered an asphalt patch and fell as he was transitioning from the sidewalk to the roadway. Although the trial court granted summary judgment on other grounds, the appellate court affirmed summary judgment due to the inadmissibility of a Google street map screenshot allegedly showing that the asphalt patch existed 5 years before the incident and thereby established a triable issue of fact as to notice against the City. The trial court ruled that although such evidence was inadmissible, plaintiff’s trial counsel could cure the foundational defects at trial.

Trial courts, including this one, have relied at the summary judgment stage on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sweetwater Union High School District v. Gilbane Building Co. (2019), which held that inadmissible evidence may be remedied at trial. The Sargenti appellate court distinguished Sweetwater by holding that evidence at the pleadings stage for anti-SLAPP motions, which was the procedural posture of that case, has yet to develop in discovery whereas at the summary judgment stage, a plaintiff has engaged in discovery with the opportunity to gather and develop admissible evidence. Further, Code of Civil Procedure § 437c expressly requires that supporting and opposing papers shall set forth admissible evidence. Thus, only admissible evidence can be relied upon in summary judgment. This holding not only assists public entities in precluding liability in dangerous condition cases but applies across-the-board for any and all summary judgments.

Childhood Sexual Abuse in School Districts

California courts have experienced a significant increase in childhood sexual abuse cases due to the passage of AB 218 in 2019, which greatly expanded the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits alleging childhood sexual abuse and also created a 3-year window beginning in 2020 to allow for any previously expired claims to be revived. As a result, childhood sexual abuse cases with incidents as far back as the 1950s have been filed against private and public institutions across the state, often relying only on decades-old evidence, if such evidence still exists.

Because of the special relationship that school districts have with their students, school districts are held to an affirmative duty to protect their students from childhood sexual abuse in their schools. For a plaintiff to succeed on such a claim against a school district, plaintiff must establish that the district knew or should have known of the employee-perpetrator’s acts of sexual abuse or propensities to commit sexual abuse¹ or that the district failed to exercise ordinary prudence in its supervision of plaintiff.² To establish constructive notice, i.e. the “should have known” standard, plaintiff must show that a district employee observed anything that reasonably should have triggered a suspicion of sexual abuse to justify an inference of constructive knowledge or that the district failed to put reasonable measures in place to prevent or detect the sexual abuse of plaintiff. Such notice evidence must be admissible and must also demonstrate a foreseeable risk of childhood sexual abuse specifically, and not any other particular kind of harm.

To combat the narrow scope of the law governing notice in childhood sexual abuse cases, plaintiffs will often rely on the Second District Court of Appeal opinion in Jane Doe v. Lawndale Elementary School District (2021) for the holding that actual knowledge is not required to establish foreseeability of sexual abuse. But that reliance is improper. The Lawndale holding refers to the threshold element of whether a school district has a duty to protect students from sexual abuse, which incorporates a categorical foreseeability analysis, whereas the elements of breach and causation require a case-specific foreseeability analysis. The Lawndale court established that school districts certainly do have such a duty, which may be limited by relevant policy considerations known as the Rowland factors.³ But most importantly, the Lawndale court performed this duty analysis through a general, categorical lens of foreseeability where actual, i.e. case-specific, knowledge is not required. Liability questions of notice, on the other hand, are distinctly different. The notice element requires a case-specific analysis of foreseeability of whether the district knew or should have known of this specific perpetrator’s propensities for sexual abuse. Plaintiffs’ use of Lawndale purposefully obfuscates the legal standard regarding notice in childhood sexual abuse cases in an attempt to combat the scant amount of notice evidence typically found in these cases.

Often used as constructive notice evidence is student testimony that the perpetrator-employee was known around school by students as “weird” or “creepy” or that students saw the perpetrator engage in inappropriate sexual misconduct with other students. However, in Rancho Cucamonga, the court held that this type of evidence is inadmissible because a school employee needed to have observed conduct that reasonably should have triggered a suspicion of sexual abuse to justify an inference of constructive knowledge. Otherwise, such evidence is speculative.

Further, evidence such as observations by district personnel of the perpetrator-teacher being alone with a student in the classroom, for example, is also often used to attempt to establish constructive notice, but such an observation, without more, has been struck down by courts because it does not justify an inference of constructive knowledge that the teacher could be sexually abusing that student. Such a leap is held by the courts to be pure speculation, particularly because there are many innocuous reasons for a student to be alone with his or her school day teacher.

Lastly, any evidence of misconduct or harm by the perpetrator-employee that has nothing to do with childhood sexual abuse also cannot establish notice. Foreseeability of childhood sexual abuse must be borne from misconduct of a sexual nature that involves children. Childhood sexual abuse cases in schools require a reasonable inference that childhood sexual abuse was occurring or that a reasonable suspicion of potential sexual abuse of a student could be formed. 

Evidence Matters

The resurgence of prioritizing long-standing evidentiary principles in suits against public entities signifies a correction in the balance between giving plaintiffs their day in court and ensuring fairness is afforded to defendants during the litigation process. Precluding inadmissible evidence such as speculation and conjecture at the summary judgment stage provides the appropriate safeguards to ensure the tenets of justice are preserved by juries making their decision truly on the merits of a case.

Disclosure: Olivarez Madruga Law Organization is one of two firms that represented the City of Long Beach in Edwin Sargenti v. Long Beach.

Endnotes

1. C.A. v. William S. Hart Union High School District (2012) 53 Cal.4th 861, 865, 871, 875.

2. Rancho Cucamonga Central School District v. Superior Court (Flowers) (2025) 116 Cal.App.5th 718, 722-723 (citing Roe v. Hesperia Unified School District (2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 13, 29).

3. Jane Doe v. Lawndale Elementary School Dist. (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 113, 126-127.