YACHATS — A 78-year-old Yachats resident is suing the city for more than $250,000 over injuries she received last year stepping into a hole in a steel sidewalk grate.
The incident occurred July 18 on the sidewalk along U.S. Highway 101 near Leroy’s Blue Whale restaurant. Court records indicate the city has not yet been served with the lawsuit.
According to the civil complaint filed Monday in Lincoln County Circuit Court, Linda Plotkin was the passenger in a car that had just parked on the east side of the highway.
Plotkin got out of the car, opened the back door for another passenger and took a step back into an open landscaping vault in the sidewalk. The vault is a rectangular grate with a 12-inch hole in the center for a tree or shrubbery. Nothing had been planted in the grate, according to the suit and an attached photograph.
The complaint notes that the grate’s manufacturer makes a closed model, and covers for the holes are also available. It says the city installed three such grates in the area around 2017 but never planted trees in them.
It also said the city had placed an orange warning cone next to one grate but not the other two, including the one she stepped into. The grate’s opening is now filled with asphalt.
As a result of stepping into the 6-inch-deep hole with a jagged metal edge, Plotkin suffered disfiguring injuries to her lower right leg. It asks the court for $22,000 in medical damages and $250,000 for pain, suffering and loss of quality of life.
