Parents of boys who drowned file suit against Port of Los Angeles, others

The parents of two boys who drowned when the family’s car plunged off a pier into the waters of the Port of Los Angeles last year filed a lawsuit today against the city of Los Angeles and several other govement entities.

Ali Elmezayen and Rabab Diab filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages on allegations of wrongful death, dangerous condition of a public property, negligence and strict product liability.

The suit also names as defendants the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, the state Department of Transportation, Jiffy Lube Inteational Inc. and Honda North America Inc.

Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the City Attoey’s Office, declined to comment.

Police previously said a 1998 Honda Civic containing the plaintiffs and their sons, 12-year-old Elhassen Elmezayen and 8-year-old Abdelkarim Elmezayen, left a parking lot at the Ports O’Call Village in San Pedro and then ran off the road at Berth 73 about 5 p.m. April 9, 2015, landing upside down in roughly 30 feet of water.

The suit alleges the govement entities were negligent for not placing barriers in the area where the accident occurred to prevent cars from going off the roadway and into the water.

“In short, there were functionally no precautionary measures taken by any public defendant to this action to prevent a car from plunging into the deep waters below the berth,” the suit states. “This (also) included a lack of adequate signage or other such waings to the public.”

The suit alleges the staff at a Jiffy Lube store in Lynwood performed substandard maintenance on the car a month before the accident and that Honda is liable because the car had a faulty braking system.

The couple suffered emotional distress from witnessing their boys “struggle frantically for their lives before drowning,” according to the lawsuit.