A fitness club is being sued after an employee at one of its childcare facilities in Southern California threw a 23-month-old child in the air and failed to catch him, resulting in a traumatic brain injury, according to the complaint.

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Matthew and Elena Kittle filed the lawsuit July 2 against The Bay Club, an upscale club with multiple locations, including one in El Segundo, just south of Los Angeles.

They allege that while their son, identified by the initials C.K., was at the daycare center at The Bay Club El Segundo on March 17, 2025, an employee tossed him into the air — 6 feet above the ground — but failed to catch him, the lawsuit says. C.K. fell to the ground and hit his head on the hardwood floor, and the employee fell backward and landed on top of him, the suit says.

It says The Bay Club downplayed the severity of the fall to the boy’s parents. C.K. sustained a concussion and still experiences side effects from the fall, the suit says.

The complaint, filed against The Bay Clubs Co. LLC and Bay Club South Bay LLC, alleges negligence; negligence per se; negligent hiring, retention and supervision; negligent infliction of emotional distress; fraud — intentional concealment; intentional infliction of emotional distress; and battery.

The Bay Club said it is unable to comment on ongoing litigation.

“At the Bay Club, the safety of our members, team members, and the families we serve is our highest priority,” it said in a statement.

The Bay Club LLC owns and operates private fitness and country clubs across the West Coast, including locations in Oregon, Washington and California.

Its El Segundo location has the El Segundo Clubhouse, which the club’s website describes as a 14,000-square-foot childcare center, where kids participate in activities under supervision.

The day of the incident, C.K.’s father dropped him off at the El Segundo Clubhouse. He told staff members he would be at the Bay Club Manhattan Country Club, a mile away, for the next three hours, according to the complaint.

C.K. was injured at 9:20 a.m., the suit says.

Security video, which was included in the lawsuit, shows a female employee holding a child by his hands and swinging him between her legs. She then throws the boy over her head, letting go of the child’s hands, and fails to catch him. The child falls to the floor behind her, and the employee falls backward and appears to land on top of him, the video shows. The employee then appears to hold the child while they are on the floor.

Other staff members react with shock and concern after the fall, the video shows.

The club called C.K.’s parents separately afterward. Matthew Kittle picked up the call at 9:30 a.m. and was told that C.K. had “fallen” and had since “calmed down,” the lawsuit says. He called back and said he would pick up his son at the end of his session.

At 9:45 a.m., the club called him again, suggested C.K. needed to be picked up and said that “they had not been able to settle C.K. down,” the filing says.

When Matthew Kittle picked up C.K. at 10:10 a.m., he found his son’s face was “badly bruised,” with his right eye swollen shut and his mouth swollen, the suit says. Once he was at home, C.K. was “extremely drowsy, lethargic, and irritable,” and his parents became concerned, the suit says.

Elena Kittle spoke with an employee, who described herself as the aquatics director, at 10:44 a.m., according to the filing.

The aquatics director said that C.K. “was being held by an employee who fell over while she was in a squatting position” and that “C.K. was only about ‘1.5 feet above the ground’ when the fall occurred,” the suit says. She also said that C.K. wanted to “go to sleep immediately after the fall” and that employees “had trouble keeping him awake,” the suit says.

An hour later, C.K. was checked into the emergency room at a medical center in Torrance. There, the medical staff also questioned the accuracy of The Bay Club’s description of the incident, “because the injuries weren’t consistent with a fall from 1.5 feet,” the suit claims.

C.K. underwent a CT scan and a neurological exam and was diagnosed with a concussion, blunt head trauma and facial abrasion, the complaint says.

At 2:22 p.m. that day, Elena Kittle spoke with The Bay Club’s general manager, who said she reviewed video of the incident and also claimed C.K. fell from 1.5 feet, according to the filing.

The parents asked for the video, which they received March 21, 2025 — which left them “shocked” by the “severity of the fall” and by “the fact that the Bay Club tried to cover up the true nature of the incident,” the suit says. The complaint says the video showed the child was at least 6 feet in the air — not 1.5 feet, as the club had said.

Weeks after the incident, C.K. had symptoms including sensitivity to light and sound, irritability, irregular sleep, lethargy and attachment issues, the suit says. A neurology specialist who examined him in April 2025 said C.K. was still experiencing concussion symptoms, the filing says.

“It was assessed that C.K. suffered a ‘definite concussion with a discrete enough force and clinical signs that indicate he’s in pain and behavioral changes,’” the complaint says. The filing says C.K. continues to experience symptoms, including loss of hearing.

The suit also alleges that the daycare center was not operating legally.

Under California law, childcare centers require licenses from the state Department of Social Services. Some child daycare programs can be exempt from licensing if parents and guardians are on the same premises and if they are not operated on certain sites, including malls or ski facilities.

The suit alleges The Bay Club does not fall under that exception because parents are not necessarily always on the premises. Children can be left at the Bay Club El Segundo Clubhouse while parents go to The Bay Club’s Manhattan Country Club a mile away, the suit says.

The club’s website says a parent or guardian has to be on-site during a reservation.

The parents, represented by the law firm Rosen Saba, demand a jury trial, exemplary and punitive damages and civil and statutory penalties.

It’s midafternoon outside KIPP Academy of Opportunity, a charter school serving children in fifth through eighth grade on South Figueroa Street in residential Los Angeles. As children inside prepare for their futures, a young female struts by in high heels, wearing nothing but a bikini and a jacket. 

“We’ll see some police officers roll by and some young women out here just prostituting. They’re walking right by, and the police drive right by them,” the school’s gun-toting security guard said. “It’s normal.”

This is Figueroa Corridor, one of California’s most notorious sex markets. Here, prostitutes gather, night after night, selling sex acts that, according to one former cop, cost as little as $25. Last year, members and associates of a gang were indicted after allegedly trafficking adults and minors—including foster children—along the corridor and branding them with tattoos.

This was all the predictable result of public policy. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law decriminalizing loitering with intent to commit prostitution. When he signed the bill, Newsom suggested it would help would reduce the harassment of women.

We went to Figueroa to see the results for ourselves. As we walked the corridor, saw the sex market, and rode along with a former LAPD vice cop, one thing became clear: on Figueroa, human flesh is big business—something state leaders appear to have no desire to change.

The scene stretches across almost four miles of hot, dusty cement. Nearly nude women cluster at the start of side streets just off the main road. Lines of cars slowly cruise along, apparently hoping to buy. Pimps either oversee the prostitutes themselves, on a nearby phone, or through hired low-level watchers. Sirens blare constantly, but officers often just roll on by. When asked about activity on the corridor, one prostitute said, “money and p*ssy,” before twerking and walking away.

Stephany Powell, a former sergeant in an LAPD Vice unit and former executive director at Journey Out, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit serving human trafficking victims, rode with us along the corridor.

“Statistically, the average age of entry for human sex trafficking is between the ages of 12 and 14 years old,” she said. “We’d see 14-, 15-year-olds that were out on the prostitution tracks. We also would see 25-to-30-year-olds . . . some of them had been out on the streets on the prostitution tracks since age 13. And in those cases, nine times out of ten, they had a trafficker.”

Figueroa has been a sex-trafficking den for decades. But recent policy changes have made the corridor harder to police. In California, it had been a crime to loiter with the intent of committing prostitution since at least 1995. Patrol officers could use this law to curtail the street market—and stop, identify, and rescue trafficked minors.

That began to change in 2016. That year, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed S.B. 1322, prohibiting minors from being charged with solicitation of and loitering with intent to commit prostitution. The law was arguably well-intentioned, reflecting a belief that trafficked children shouldn’t be treated as criminals.

But that wasn’t enough for the state’s progressives. In 2021, State Senator Scott Wiener authored S.B. 357, a bill that would fully decriminalize loitering with intent to commit prostitution. A trio of the state’s most powerful progressive institutions—the Anti-Defamation League, the ACLU’s California chapter, and Equality California—rallied behind the bill, which passed in 2022.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill in July of that year, suggesting that it would reduce the “harassment of women.” He also referenced “transgender adults,” seemingly endorsing LGBT activists’ view that the loitering statute had criminalized “walking while trans.”

“Black adults accounted for 56.1% of the loitering charges in Los Angeles between 2017-2019, despite making up less than 10% of the city’s population,” Newsom wrote. “To be clear, this bill does not legalize prostitution. It simply revokes provisions of the law that have led to disproportionate harassment of women and transgender adults.”

Since the law’s passage, however, Figueroa has more prostitutes than it did before. Before S.B. 357, Powell says she delivered around 30 makeup kits along the entire corridor each night that she engaged in outreach efforts. When we drove past a particularly active handful of blocks, Powell said that after “S.B. 357 passed, we counted about 60 girls just from this track [alone].”

More minors are apparently being trafficked, too. The Times reported that LAPD Sergeant Al Navarro’s officers, who work at the nearby 77th Street station, rescued 123 children in 2024—a nearly eightfold increase from 2022, the year before S.B. 357 took effect.

The law itself is driving these trends. Before S.B. 357, police officers could use a woman’s attire and behavior to determine that she was loitering to commit prostitution. Once that behavior was decriminalized, prostitutes began wearing hardly any clothes—and law enforcement found itself helpless to control the sex trade.

“A lot of the girls hardly have anything on, they’re practically naked. In many cases you can see right through whatever they’re wearing,” Powell said. “Before S.B. 357 . . . what would happen if we were working vice and we’d see somebody out there like that, we could arrest them for solicitation of prostitution. Now, in order for you to arrest them for solicitation of prostitution, there has to be an act involved.”

S.B. 357 has also enabled traffickers. In the past, a patrol officer could arrest a loitering prostitute to get her off the streets and encourage her to testify against a trafficker. Today, law enforcement has to use resource-strapped undercover units to target traffickers one-by-one.

“SB 357 removed a key enforcement tool that kept communities free from red light blight,” former Los Angeles County sheriff Alex Villanueva told us. “This ill-advised bill condemned the marginalized to be sex trafficked, and human trafficking has exploded.”

The situation is so dire that the federal government intervened. In August 2025, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli spearheaded the region’s first-ever RICO human trafficking case against the vicious Hoover Criminal Gang. Essayli’s office charged six members and associates of the Hoovers with various crimes, including sex trafficking of minors, money laundering, and sexual exploitation of a child.

The indictment spells out the depraved allegations. The Hoovers and their associates allegedly targeted adults and children as young as 14; branded their victims with tattoos; and, in some cases, required their victims to secure $1,000 per night. In one instance, a Hoover associate and two unindicted co-conspirators allegedly tried to kidnap prostitutes from San Bernardino, a plot that failed only when the two targets broke free and escaped.

On July 1, 2026, a federal follow-up operation took down another ten suspects, including the operator of a seedy motel, who was charged with “financially benefiting from the Hoover gang’s sex trafficking operation.”

City Journal’s four-day visit to the corridor took place just before the second operation against the Hoovers and revealed the challenges faced by the ongoing federal efforts. Figueroa still pulsed with activity, with the entire apparatus of apparent prostitutes, pimps, watchers, and Johns out in the open for all to see. Police drove on by. Women walk the corridor, risking disease, beatings, and death with each step.

When he signed S.B. 357, Gavin Newsom suggested that the new law would help reduce harassment against women. What it enabled instead is a wave of crime, suffering, and abuse.

California’s delayed release of its Baby2Baby contract is casting a shadow over the state’s new Golden State Diaper program.

Two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a controversial multimillion-dollar state diaper contract with Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with existing ties to the Newsom administration and the First Partner, Californians still have not been allowed to see the contract or competitive bid records behind the deal to manufacture and deliver millions of California co-branded free diapers to new parents.

The delay comes despite repeated requests by CBS California Investigates and despite California law requiring the state to release these records. 

ALSO READ: California’s “Diapergate”: Critics got free diaper math wrong, but state won’t release key Baby2Baby records

The Newsom administration waited 24 days to decide whether it would even allow the public to see the records, but continues to delay releasing the Baby2Baby contract and competitive bid records that the governor announced more than two months ago.   

At the same time, California lawmakers are advancing legislation that would give state agencies additional time to respond to California Public Records Act requests, further extending how long the public must wait for records like these.

Delayed accountability 

CBS California Investigates requested a copy of the Baby2Baby contract on May 12, four days after Governor Newsom announced the partnership during a high-profile press conference. 

Given the controversy and misinformation surrounding the announcement, we asked the Newsom administration to forgo the formal California Public Records Act (CPRA) process and provide an expedited copy of the contract and competitive bid records. 

Both are expressly identified as public records under California law, which also requires agencies to “promptly notify” requesters whether records are disclosable, allowing a maximum of ten days to let them know the estimated date that they will provide the records. 

Instead, the Newsom Administration spent 24 days determining whether or not it would even allow Californians to see these public records, then said it would take another 42 days (if the state meets its latest deadline) to provide a copy of the contract and competitive bid records that the governor publicly announced two months ago. 

What is AB 1821?

Even as public interest grows, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would allow agencies to further delay responses to Public Records Act requests, extending the maximum initial 10-day determination window and 14-day extension window from calendar days to business days.

State law does not limit how long an agency can wait to actually provide the records after they provide that initial response.   

ALSO READ: California State Secrets: What public officials don’t want you to know

Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco introduced Assembly Bill 1821, which originally sought to overhaul the transparency law to allow agencies to sue if they deemed a request “malicious” and charge up to $66 an hour to provide public records.   

The proposal triggered fierce pushback from a broad coalition including the First Amendment Coalition, ACLU California Action, Common Cause California, the League of Women Voters, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Senate Judiciary Chair Tom Umberg, stripped the most controversial elements from the legislation before moving it forward.

“People shouldn’t have to tell us why they want that information. People shouldn’t have to pay to get information from public officials,” Umberg told CBS California. 

Still, the amended version lengthens the legal window for officials to respond to records requests. 

Pacheco maintained the necessity of the changes for burdened departments.

“Agencies across the state are experiencing a sharp increase in requests that are exceptionally broad,” she argued during testimony.

Ginny LaRoe of the First Amendment Coalition contends that essential documents, such as multimillion-dollar state contracts, should be accessible without any formal request at all.

“You should have that document in your hands. You should’ve had it in your hand the day they were talking about it,” LaRoe said.

Rather than forcing Californians to wait weeks for paper-pushing, LaRoe suggests the state should proactively upload finalized agreements online with minor necessary redactions for personal information, ensuring immediate transparency and easing the administrative burden.

Umberg signaled support for a shift toward automated disclosure.

“I think there’s a world where we make them do that,” he said. “It’s up to us to motivate them to do so.”

More than two months after Newsom’s big announcement, CBS California Investigates continues to wait for the state to release the Baby2Baby contract and the underlying bid documents.

After waiting 24 days to confirm the records were, in fact, disclosable, the state said it would need an additional 28 days to provide them. At 5:09 pm on the 28th day – Friday, July 3, a state holiday – CBS California received a presumably automated email informing us the state would need another two weeks to provide the contract the governor announced two months ago. 

Until these public records are actually public, questions will continue to mount about how this deal was reached and how competing proposals were scored.

Day 1 | May 12

CBS California Investigates requested a copy of the Baby2Baby contract four days after Governor Newsom announced the partnership during a high-profile Capitol press conference.

The Governor’s Office referred the request to the California Health and Human Services Agency. Because of the intense public interest following the announcement, CBS California Investigates asked Deputy Secretary of External Affairs Sami Gallegos and Assistant Secretary of External Affairs Rodger Butler to forgo the formal California Public Records Act (CPRA) process and simply provide an expedited copy of the highly publicized contract.

Instead, Butler directed us to the Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), the agency handling the procurement. HCAI acknowledged receipt of the request.

Day 7 | May 19

CBS California Investigates followed up with the HCAI, again requesting an expedited copy of the contract because we were on a deadline.

The agency responded that the request was being processed through the California Public Records Act, rather than providing the contract directly.

Day 14 | May 22

Exactly 10 calendar days after the request, the HCAI invoked the CPRA’s “unusual circumstances” provision, extending the deadline another 14 days to determine whether the requested records were disclosable.

The agency wrote that it needed additional time because “two or more components of the agency have substantial subject matter interest” in the request.

Day 28 | June 5

Fourteen days later, the HCAI agreed that the records are public.

The agency determined that the Baby2Baby contract, procurement packet, scope of work, bid scoring sheets and vendor award documents are disclosable public records.

However, instead of releasing them, the HCAI said it would need another three to four weeks to identify and produce the records.

AB 1821 | While we waited

While CBS California Investigates waited for the records, lawmakers advanced AB 1821, legislation that originally proposed sweeping changes to California’s Public Records Act.

After bipartisan criticism and opposition from transparency advocates, many of the bill’s most controversial provisions were removed. However, the amended bill still gives agencies additional time to respond to public records requests.

Day 52 | July 3

Instead of receiving the records, CBS California Investigates received another email at 5:09 p.m. on the final day of the promised three-to-four-week production window.

Rather than releasing the records, the state delayed production another two weeks, pushing the expected release well past the two-month mark.

Day 56 and counting

Fifty-six days after CBS California Investigates requested the Baby2Baby contract, and 60 days after Governor Newsom publicly announced the partnership, Californians still have not been allowed to review:

• The executed contract
• The procurement packet
• The scope of work
• The competitive bid scoring sheets
• The vendor award documents

Translation: The Newsom administration spent 24 days determining whether records already identified as public under California law could be released. It then delayed producing those records for another six weeks. If the state meets its latest deadline, Californians will have waited 66 days from our request and 70 days from the governor’s announcement to see the contract.