Second Lawsuit Filed Over Deadly Accident at King Gillette Ranch
A woman says she was hit by a tree branch during the 2025 tragedy, which claimed the life of an 8-year-old boy.
September 10, 2026 · Calabasas
A second lawsuit has been filed over the oak branch collapse that killed an 8-year-old boy at King Gillette Ranch in Calabasas last summer, [The Acorn is reporting](https://www.theacorn.com/articles/second-lawsuit-filed-in-fatal-oak-branch-fall/).
In a complaint filed Aug. 26, Hayley Weiser says she was grazed by the falling branch in July 2025 and witnessed the fatal crushing of Lamar McGlothurn, leaving her with post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, anxiety, depression and physical injuries.
The suit alleges negligence by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which manages the 588-acre park off Mulholland Highway, and Gomez Landscape and Tree Care, which provided tree maintenance there. The complaint does not give Weiser's age or say why she was at the park that day.
Lamar was attending a summer day camp at the ranch, and was waiting with others near a picnic table to be picked up when a limb estimated at 25 to 30 feet long cracked and fell onto the group. His parents arrived and tried in vain to lift the branch off their son, who later died at a hospital. Four others were reportedly hurt, though authorities' initial accounts of the injured did not mention an adult woman.
The complaint alleges the tree's dangers were well known. Another large branch had fallen from the same tree just a week earlier, it states, and the same tree care company had been hired to remove it. Communications obtained through public records requests showed officials knew of the tree's hazardous condition before the incident, yet no effort was made to cordon off the area, according to the suit.
Lamar's family previously sued the MRCA, the camp and the tree company, reaching a settlement in April in which insurers paid a combined $19 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. A hearing in Weiser's case is set for February 2027 in Santa Monica Superior Court.