New York, NY – A new report shows New York City paid nearly $521 million to settle personal injury and property damage lawsuits in 2010, with three agencies accounting for 67 percent of all settlements.
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City Comptroller John C. Liu released the report Wednesday, showing that the amount paid has decreased by seven percent since 2009.
But Liu said city agencies need to continue to work to reduce the cost of litigation and settlements.
The three agencies with the most settlements were the New York City Police Department, the Health and Hospitals Corp. and the Department of Transportation.
The city’s Law Department said the total payouts have decreased by about 12 percent since 2001. They say a combination of tort reform and risk management strategies have helped to reduce settlements.
One way to reduce this number is to make the city worker who was directly responsible for these law suits pay a small percentage of the payouts. (Like $100 for every $100,000 the city pays out). And on top of that, have each person who is their superior -all the way up the chain of command- pay a small percentage of the payouts.
Even though it won’t make a dent in the overall sum, the number will drop drastically. Its simple logic, if you hold people responsible for their actions, they will be more careful. If you let people “feel free” then they won’t care about their actions and its consequences.
I don’t understand why city employees can “get away with murder” in the private sector you have to pay for your actions. If a worker does something wrong because he was careless (not a honest mistake) that costs the company money he has to pay for it -not necessarily with money – but he doesn’t get away scott free.
What are we asking of city agencies to be angels? No! Just be more careful how you treat our tax dollars. Is that asking too much?
There is a new book, which was written by a former aide of Sarah Palin, Frank Bailey. In the book, Bailey quotes Todd Palin, was stating that the state of Alaska would rather pay high sums of money to settle personal injury claims (as a result of civil litigation against Alaska State Troopers), than for the Alaska Department of Public Safety to fire the individual state troopers. He mentioned one specific case where one state trooper had several complaints of police brutality against him, but was still on the job. In addition, Bailey mentioned that there were strong police unions in Alaska, which the politicians were afraid of. Unfortunately, I think that the same holds true in New York City, and across the country.
Guess who foots the bill for these personal injury payouts? The residents of NYC in the form of higher taxes. These shysters who think that the City is a bottomless well of money are actually taking money from your pockets.
#1 - That’s a very good idea. The problem is how it could possibly be enforced. Unions are too powerful to allow that much responsibility fall on their members.