On Sept. 12, 2014, plaintiff Jake Martin, 16, a junior high school student at Adolfo Camarillo High School, was a guest of one of the residents of the Ladera Neighborhood Homeowners Association, a homeowners association in Camarillo that maintained a community swimming pool for its members and their guests. The swimming pool had a single, “composite sign” (or a “6 in 1” sign) posted near the entrance gate. The sign included the words “NO DIVING” and a pictogram of a person diving with a red diagonal line through it. The pool also had depth markers on the deck of the pool as well as on the sidewalls of the pool showing depths of 5 feet, 4 feet and 3.5 feet. Jake eventually went swimming with five of his friends, who were also juniors at his school. Security video taken that day showed Jake and his friends playing “Marco Polo”, swimming and walking in all areas of pool, including the shallow portion, which is 3.5 feet deep. All three of the boys dove into the pool at various areas. After several minutes, most of the group of teenagers went to go sit in the hot tub, which was off camera. A short while later, one of the teenagers dove back into the pool. He then stood at the edge of the pool, near the hot tub, and Jake dove passed him into the shallow end of the pool, which had 3.5-foot deep water, and he sustained to his spine. Jake sued the Ladera Neighborhood Homeowners Association; the management company for the homeowners association, Lyons Management Inc. (which was doing business as Tandem Property Management, which was initially incorrectly listed as “Tandem Lyons Property Management”); and the maintainer of the pool, Best Pool Maintenance Inc. Jake alleged that the defendants failed to properly maintain the pool, creating a dangerous condition, and that the defendants failed to properly warn of that hazardous condition. Best Pool Maintenance ultimately settled out of the case for an undisclosed amount prior to trial. (The fact that Best Pool Maintenance was a party and had previously settled out was kept away from the jury.) At trial, the plaintiff’s aquatics and pool safety expert testified that the signage was below the standard of care in several respects. First, she opined that the code required more than one “No Diving” sign and that the signs must be “conspicuous.” She testified that the fact that there was only one sign posted in an inconspicuous location was both a violation of the code and below the standard of care for the operator of a community swimming pool. The expert also criticized the depth markings on the deck of the pool because they did not include the universal “No Diving” symbol, and criticized the fact that the depth markers on the pool walls were about 50 percent submerged and were allegedly “illegible.” In addition, the expert opined that the conditions were both code violations and below the standard of care for community swimming pools. Defense counsel noted that the subject pool was inspected at least once a year by the Ventura County Environmental Health Department and that the pool was not found to be in violation with the county’s regulations regarding the posting of “No Diving” signs. The defense’s human factors expert testified that warning signs are only effective in changing behavior if the person targeted by the warning seeks out the warning sign and is motivated by risk avoidance. Defense counsel contended that, in this case, Jake had grown up in a house with a swimming pool and had been admonished by his parents not to dive into the shallow end. Thus, the defense’s expert opined that adding more warning signs, adding pictograms, or using more explicit words to induce fear or a sense of threat (such as “DANGER”, “SHALLOW WATER”, “YOU CAN BE PARALYZED”, etc.) has not been shown to increase compliance with warnings. The defense’s code compliance expert testified that the markings and signage at the pool complied with the applicable California Building Code sections when the pool was constructed in 1993. She also testified that building codes are generally not retroactive and that a property owner is not required to comply with new building codes when they are updated., Jake struck his head against the bottom of the pool, resulting in fractures to four cervical vertebrae, with the most severe spinal cord injury being at the C5 level. He was subsequently rendered a quadriplegic. Accordingly, Jake lost partial or total function of all four limbs. Specifically, Jake claimed that he is paralyzed from the waist down and that although he has some feeling in his arms, he does not have any feeling in his hands. Jake was a junior high school student at the time of the accident. There was no dispute that Jake will be required to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life and will need 24-hour care with either a licensed vocational nurse or a certified home health care aide. Plaintiff’s counsel presented evidence that Jake’s loss of future earnings would likely be in the neighborhood of $1.4 million, assuming Jake’s likely ability to achieve a college degree. The plaintiff’s medical experts testified that Jake’s recoverable medical costs, as of the time of the trial, totaled $506,000 and that the present value of Jake’s future medical care will total about $19 million. The defense’s medical experts proposed a life care plan of approximately $9 million and calculated Jake’s future loss of earnings at approximately $420,000.