30th Mar 2025

Saving Taxpayers Millions of Dollars on Lawsuit Payouts- Ep#6

 

PODCST #6 

Welcome back to Real Talk – Behind the Badge. I’m Tim, a retired police Sergeant from Massachusetts, but I now reside in South Carolina. This is our sixth podcast, and you can watch each one at RealTalkBehindtheBadge.com, on Facebook or on YouTube. Today, we’re going to talk about how we can actually save the taxpayers millions of dollars on lawsuit payouts by using an alternate method of payouts.

 For today, I am using SC’s payouts as examples, but I am sure the recommendations I am making would also be viable in most other states. So let’s get going.

 

I’m going to assume that if you are listening to this podcast, you have listened to the last podcast, #5, “The Cost of Defending Police Lawsuits and Where the Money Actually Goes.” If you haven’t, I recommend you watch or listen to that first.

 In 2024, law firms in SC were paid a total of almost $29 million dollars by the IRF. There has to be another way. The millions of dollars the state actually paid out to law firms to defend lawsuits is enormous leaving the victims with a fraction of the pay-outs for each lawsuit. I called this what appears to be “lawyer welfare sponsored by the state”, which is a guaranteed income to lawyers courtesy of the taxpayers. I also believe this is one reason they want to keep police officer academy training at a minimum, they want these lawsuits to keep coming.

 There are also always going to be a very small fraction of officers who use their authority illegally, or on the cusp of legality. Whether this is due to poor training, departmental policies of “looking the other way” or other officers (or supervisors) covering for an officer when they can, it can and will cause the public to disrespect and distrust the department when any of this occurs. But the fact remains that officers who abuse their powers often have most of the chips on their side and are hard to discipline.

 So what if you are one of the victims of those few officers? With otherwise good citizens not knowing what they can do to report those abuses and/or be compensated for their costs, time, embarrassment, anxiety, etc., they may feel helpless and have no alternatives to redress the situation, other than to seek legal help and file a lawsuit, often costing the cities and towns large amounts of money.

While the majorities of police officers are very good at their jobs and are decent, fair and well-intentioned human beings, this does not mean they don’t make mistakes once in a while. We all do, and we all have, and that is why I believe immunity for officers should prevail for most lawsuits.

But then, even well-intentioned mistakes can cost good citizens financially or in the forms of mental anguish, embarrassment, and loss of freedom. Should a police department or a State, County, City or town ignore the grievances that some victims endure and then basically tell them, “We’re sorry this happened, we’ve handled it, now go away?”

 In most cases, the public doesn’t seem to have any recourse for those who may have been illegally deprived of their civil, legal, or Constitutional rights, or abused by an officer(s) unless they file a lawsuit against the government entity, department and/or the officer. That also must change.

 Expecting the public to trust police departments to investigate themselves, in itself, will cause the public to not trust law enforcement, especially if they have witnessed such actions, heard from a friend or relative, or have past first-hand experience. There are also many videos on YouTube that shows officers violating citizen rights with the victim placing a complaint and the department later saying they investigated but didn’t find any wrong-doing when obviously thee was. Here, they see the department investigating itself, protecting itself, and often don’t believe they have a fair and balanced voice.

Many who have had their rights violated will not file a complaint directly with the County, City or department because they either:

  1. Don’t think it will get anywhere.
  2. Are skeptical of the department investigating itself.
  3. They are scared of retribution.
  4. They are passing through (visitor/traveler) and they don’t expect the department will take it seriously.

So, they feel they don’t have any choice but to seek legal help and file a lawsuit.

 

Tell me, what is a citizen supposed to do when they have been detained, searched or arrested illegally? They are embarrassed, stripped of their rights and their freedoms. If a person has been illegally abused or their rights violated, how are they made whole or compensated for those violations without going to court? Most often, they are not, and again, this leads to the public not trusting law enforcement. Additionally, some departments don’t allow input from the complainant after a complaint has been made, or they don’t follow through to the complainant with an investigative resolution. Some departments don’t even have a way for a person to make a complaint, or they make it hard to file a complaint, or they have to file the complaint with the person they are complaining about, and this is not reasonable.

 It is also my opinion that in many cases, the officer, personally, may not be at fault as he/she has not had proper training. Take an officer who has been on the department for 20 years and has not had any updated training since the academy. How many laws have been enacted or updated, how many court decisions have there been in 20 years? This is not acceptable and in these cases I place the blame squarely on the administration and the city/county, etc. Do they just figure sometimes it’s cheaper to pay out higher insurance premiums or lawsuits than the cost to properly train all their officers?

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If a lawsuit is filed against the department, County, City, or officer, it may cost the Insurance Reserve Fund or the city or county thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to defend and may take years to come to trial or mutual agreement and maybe even longer for appeals. Even if the case is dismissed from court on a technicality, or the court finds no fault on the officer, it is likely it will still cost the IRF or government entity thousands and thousands to defend in legal fees if they are self-insured. If they are insured by an insurance fund, their insurance premiums will surely increase.

If the department, city, county or officer loses the court case, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and the bad press it brings can be very harmful to the departments, cities and counties and/or officer. Most government entities have insurance that will cover most damages awarded from any lawsuits, but there is no insurance against bad publicity to the department.

If we were to consider an alternate course of compensation for those whose complaints that have been found valid, and I repeat, for those complaints that have been found valid, we can probably save many millions of taxpayer dollars a year.

 Instead of the state contracting outside law firms they pay millions of dollars annually to, to defend insurance claims, (See Podcast #5) we believe the state Insurance Reserve Fund should maintain their own office of insurance professionals that are trained to negotiate with victims who have had their claims substantiated and have indicated a willingness to consider compensation without hiring an attorney. Now let me be very clear here. When I say their claims have been substantiated, I mean they have been through an investigative procedure and found to be valid. We will go into that in another podcast, but for now we are talking about claims that HAVE BEEN SUBSTANTIATED ONLY.

Let’s take an actual case from the 1st quarter of 2024. The first false arrest case that was settled of the fiscal year was case # T130080020 emanating from Berkeley County. The alleged false arrest happened on June 20, 2019. It was settled on September 11, 2023, four years later.

The case cost the IRF a total of $25,095.81. The complainant was awarded $10K dollars. The attorneys representing the IRF (the state) were given $15,095.81. That’s more than 150% of the claimant’s award. How much did the claimant actually get? If she had an attorney, probably about $6,000 dollars after her attorney fees of, I’m assuming a standard of about 40% (that’s $4,000 dollars). So the attorneys for both sides probably ended up with over $19,000 dollars, where the victim (claimant) ends up with only about $6K dollars.

So, to reiterate, the case cost the taxpayers $25,095.81. The complainant got around $6K and it took over 4 years.

Here’s another one:

Let’s take another actual case from the 1st quarter of 2024. That case was case # T130080020 emanating from Berkeley County again. The alleged false arrest happened on May 23, 2018. It was settled on September 29, 2023, five years later.

--The case cost the IRF a total of $125,260.58

-- The complainant was awarded $66,250.00 dollars.

-- The attorneys representing the IRF (the state) were given $59,010.58

-- How much did the claimant actually get? If she had an attorney, probably about $39,750 dollars after her attorney fees; again, I’m assuming a standard of about 40% which would be about $26,500.00 dollars

-- So the attorneys for both sides probably ended up with over $85,000 dollars.

 Here’s my fix:

It is my belief that by using a state office of insurance professionals to negotiate fair compensation, victims will probably receive more funds, be paid faster and will save taxpayers millions of dollars. That is a win-win situation for everyone, the taxpayers and the victims.

If we were to take the statistics from the 1ST QTR, FY 2024 OF CLAIMS SETTLED IN S.C. LAW ENFORCEMENT, the total cost to the state insurance fund was $9,240,254.00. Of those payouts, $3,303,924.00 was paid to outside law firms to represent the insurance fund. $5,936,330.00 was paid to the claimants. If the claimant’s attorneys received an average of 40% of the award, the claimants would actually receive a total of $3,361,798.00. If the amount the claimant actually received was the only amount the IRF had to pay out, that would be a savings of over 5 and half million dollars of taxpayer funds for only 3 months of the year. I believe even more could be saved as people wouldn’t have to wait 2-7 years for a payout and would settle for even less. That is just the savings in the first quarter of that year and just for law enforcement claims. What about all the 100’s of other claims? What would be the savings for the year? $20 Million plus?

 Here’s the big question that makes this a win-win for everyone… If a state employee that negotiates on behalf of the IRF comes to me before I hire an attorney and says, “Look, you stated you want to sue us for $50K dollars. I can show you what you will probably get out of that lawsuit based on past results if you were to hire an attorney and sue us. You will probably end up with around $17K, AFTER PAYING YOUR ATTORNEY AROUND 40% OF ANY AWARD AND WAITING 2-7 YEARS FOR A PAYOUT. I am authorized to write you a check right now for $15K dollars.”

Would I take it? You bet I would and I believe most others would also. This one case would save the taxpayers around $30K dollars. Now multiply that savings by 1000. That saves the taxpayers around $30M dollars a year.

 So, how do we get to this scenario where a complainant holds off hiring an attorney until they are offered a compensation deal?

In my next podcast, we’ll tackle that; the many details of how an alternate course of complaints I believe the public would perceive and trust as fair would work.

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This is Real Talk. Signing off until next time.

Thank you and be careful out there!