California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Weddle v. State, 152 Cal.Rptr. 886, 89 Cal.App.3d 980 (Cal. App. 1979):
Code of Civil Procedure section 629 provides that the court "on motion of a party against whom a verdict has been rendered, shall render judgment in favor of the aggrieved party notwithstanding the verdict whenever a motion for a directed verdict for the aggrieved party should have been granted had a previous motion been made." In order to have been entitled to a directed verdict, the state must have established "as a matter of law all the elements" of the design immunity defense (Cameron v. State of California, 7 Cal.3d 318, 325, 102 Cal.Rptr. 305, 309, 497 P.2d 777, 781) and plaintiffs must have failed to adduce evidence of the state's negligence independent of plan or design which was a proximate cause of the accident. Plaintiffs maintain that the state failed to establish all of the elements required for design immunity and, in addition, that there was evidence of the state's negligence apart from the design of the offramp. We have concluded that the state failed to establish all of the elements of design immunity and therefore need not consider whether there was evidence of negligence independent of design.
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