What actually happens may will turn on a very unspectacular progression of number crunching sessions.

Long before they take this to trial, there will be a series of negotiations between the plaintiff lawyers, and the lawyers for the City, Zoo, and the Zoo's Insurance company.

The City's insurance company will low ball a settlement offer, and the plaintiff (after informing the client) will counter and they will go back and forth on it.

The Judge will sit in and try to get them to reach a settlement. Legal liability - which, so far from press reports, is a gray area, is something that will be resolved only at trial itself, if it ever cdomes to that.

Often as not it never does. Trial costs, preparation, jury voir dire, trial juror selection, expert witness expenses, various motions filed, the Court's time and calendar all are examples of things that mitigate taking the thing to trial

Not at all out of the realm of possibility that the case will settle, with the "plaintiffs receiving an undisclosed sum, and the City and Zoo refusing to admit any liability whatsoever".

Furthermore, even before all this, lots of times the City of San Francisco requires plaintiffs in cases like this to first "File a claim against the City of San Francisco".

99% of the time those are denied (and the lawyers file suit next.)

That is called the legal maxim of "Exhausting your administrative remedies".
You are supposed to do that first before filing a lawsuit.

In San Francisco that would take typically 6 months.

Not a stretch at all to imagine this could drag out 2-3 years

I think the strange "Knoller" case ( That huge Presa Canario dog that was owned by two lawyers that bit and killed a lesbian woman in the elevator of a Presidio Heights apartment building in SF if you remember) took at LEAST that long or more, to wrap up. I saw the Court file, in the San Francisco c ourthouse on that one, it was enormous, the filed papers took volume after volume in the Clerk's office.

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