@flo Ok… but I would say that the argument the hypothetical opposing lawyer should make, should be about the details of that hypothetical case. If a city is to be held accountable for someone falling and hurting themselves, then it seems to me that the city should have failed to do something that it can reasonably be expected to be responsible for, that led a reasonable person to fall and hurt themselves.
To me, that should need to involve negligence on the city’s part, and not negligence or foolishness on the faller’s part, and not just bad luck, either. Because a city government should not (to my mind) be responsible for making the city entirely accident-free and danger-free. It just should not create needless danger, or mislead people that something dangerous is safe, or create hazards that reasonable people might be completely surprised by.
For example, I once wore dress shoes to a formal event in a city where there were concrete stairs and walkways between the event an nearby parking, and it rained. I learned that dress shoes can have slick tractionless bottoms with near-zero traction on web concrete. I am not about to sue anyone about that. I’m just not going to wear shoes like that again, or if I do, I’ll be extremely careful about where I walk in them, or glue something with traction to their soles. I think those soles are dumb and dangerous, but I’m not going to sue to the shoe company nor the city about it.