Oakland settlement: Boy’s death costs $1.75 million

The Oakland City Council approved a $1.75 million payment Tuesday to the family of a 16-yearold boy who died in 2015 when a tree branch he was climbing near Lake Merritt snapped and fell on top of his head.

The teen, Jack Lewis, was an 11th-grader and member of the rowing team at Oakland Technical High School. A lawsuit his family filed alleged that city workers knew the Lakeside Park tree, near Fairyland, had decayed but did not mitigate the danger or warn the public.

Jack was at a birthday party Dec. 4, 2015, and was climbing the tree along with several of his friends when the limb broke, causing him to fall. The branch, which the suit described as 20 feet long and a foot in diameter, landed on his head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The family’s lawsuit said city workers had previously removed the top of the tree and seen its decayed state. They had apparently marked it for removal but failed to take action before Lewis’ death.

The boy’s parents, Michael and Lisa, are working with the city to create a memorial of some kind to their son, according to their attorney, John Winer.

“The Lewis family is pleased that we were able to resolve this matter and that the area around Fairyland has been made safer as a result, unfortunately, of Jack’s accident,” the parents said in a statement released to The Chronicle through Winer.

Winer said the settlement was a fair resolution to all sides.

Under the settlement agreement, the city did not admit fault or wrongdoing.

Also Tuesday night, the council approved a settlement for a sidewalk trip-and-fall case for $1 million.

In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a $14.5 million settlement for a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down in 2016 when she was struck by a 100pound tree limb in Washington Square Park.