The Cost of Defending Police Lawsuits and Where the Money Actually Goes EP 5

REAL TALK-#5 - https://youtu.be/c7NrfL0nQqE

Title: Where Does All the Money Go?

 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 fifth podcast, and you can watch each one at RealTalkBehindtheBadge.com, on Facebook or on YouTube. Today, we’re going to talk about the cost of defending police lawsuits and where all the money actually goes.

 Get Ready, because this is going to knock your socks off!

  Since I live in South Carolina, I decided to dig into the insurance payouts here. I want you to understand, the figures I am about to show you come directly from the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund, which handles all the lawsuits from just about all the cities and counties in the state!! I just added them up! You can see the link at the end of this blog so you can look them up yourself if you’d like.

 Now the Insurance Reserve Fund hires outside law firms to defend all the lawsuits and pays them up to $175 dollars an hour plus expenses. So, the following is what I found and at the end, we’ll talk about how this affects police officers in South Carolina.

 In the 1^st quarter of 2024: The IRF paid out $9.2M dollars just in law enforcement claims.

 Of that $9.2 million dollars, $182.2K was paid to plaintiffs just for 14 false arrests lawsuits. $232.9K was paid to contracted attorneys for the IRF to defend the lawsuits. So, to defend the lawsuits, the IRF paid about $50K more for the defense of the lawsuits than paid to the victims. The defense of the lawsuits by the state of $232.9K is 56% of the total payouts for false arrests and 128% of the awards to the plaintiffs.

Six of the lawsuits resulted in no awards to the plaintiffs. We don’t know whether they just dropped out, ran out of money to continue the lawsuit, or whether a court dismissed it on legal or technical grounds.

 

In other words the attorneys hired by the state got 28% more than the plaintiff’s awards! Now for every $1,000 dollars a plaintiff receives, they usually end up with about 60% of an award, their attorneys get the rest off the top for their fees and expenses. Here, that means the plaintiffs ended up obtaining about $109,300 dollars after paying their attorneys. That also means the state-hired attorneys got over twice as much as the victim ($109.3K vs.$232.9K)! Think about that! And that’s not the worst of it!

Brutality claims alone were over $1M in payouts. Of that $1M+ in payouts, only $150K dollars was paid to plaintiffs and $923.3K dollars was paid to contracted attorneys for the IRF to defend claims, that totaling 86% of the payouts.

 

Civil Rights claims alone were over $2M dollars in payouts by the IRF. Of that $995K dollars was paid to plaintiffs and over $1.0M dollars was paid to contracted attorneys for the IRF to defend the claims, totaling 50.8% of the payouts.

 

Remember!!! These figures are only for the first 3 fiscal months of 2024.

So, let’s take a deeper look into a couple of these claims. We don’t know exactly how much the attorneys for the plaintiff charged the plaintiff, but we can make a pretty good guess. South Carolina allows the attorneys to charge up to 35% of an award, plus expenses. So if we were to assume a total of about 40%, we’d probably be within the ballpark.

 As we stated earlier, $415.1K dollars was paid out in total for false arrests lawsuits. That’s $182.2K dollars paid out to the plaintiffs/complainant, and $232.9K paid to attorneys by the IRF to defend the lawsuits.

If the plaintiff’s attorneys charged a total of 40%, that is approximately $72.9K dollars. Add that together with the $232.9K dollars paid to the attorneys representing the State of South Carolina and you get a total of $305.8K dollars paid to attorneys. So out of the $415.1K dollars paid out by the IRF, $109.3K dollars was received by the plaintiffs and $305.8K dollars went to attorneys. That’s almost 3 times what the plaintiffs ended up receiving and 73.7% of all the insurance funds spent on false arrests went to attorneys! What is going on here? I smell a rat!!

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 Now let’s look at brutality claims. There were 4 brutality claims that paid out $1,073,362 dollars. One claim paid out $50K to the plaintiff (the victim) and then the state paid out $850.9K dollars to lawyers hired by the state to defend the lawsuit (that’s damn near 1 million dollars. Another case paid out $0 dollars to the plaintiff and then the state paid $66K dollars to attorneys to defend it.

 In total, there were four brutality lawsuits, with a total of $150K dollars paid to the plaintiffs, and $923.3K paid to attorneys by the state to defend the four lawsuits.

Now, if the plaintiff’s attorneys charged a total of around 40%, that would be approximately $60K dollars total. Add that together with the $923.3K dollars paid to the attorneys representing the State of South Carolina and you get a total of $983.3K dollars. So out of the $1.07 million dollars paid out by the state for the four brutality claims, $90K dollars was received by the plaintiffs and a total of $983K dollars went to attorneys. That’s 91.8% of all the funds spent on brutality cases by the Insurance Reserve Fund went to attorneys! Are you kidding me? (Is this a state approved welfare scheme for attorneys?)

 Want more?

How about Civil Rights Lawsuits? Over $2.024 million dollars was paid out for civil rights lawsuits. Most of these were Dept of Corrections lawsuits.

 One case paid out $42K to the plaintiff and then paid over $324K to lawyers hired by the IRF to defend the lawsuit.

 In total, that’s $995K paid to the plaintiffs, and $1.03 million paid to attorneys by the IRF to defend the lawsuits.

Again, now, if the plaintiff’s attorneys charged a total of 40%, that is approximately $398K dollars. Add that together with the $1.03 million dollars paid to the attorneys representing the State of South Carolina and you get a total of $1.428 million dollars paid to lawyers. So, to total this up, out of the $2.024 million dollars paid out by the state for Civil Rights violations, $597K dollars was received by the plaintiffs and $1.428 million dollars went to attorneys. That’s 70.5% of all the funds spent on civil rights violations cases went to attorneys! Are you hearing me yet?

 In total for all claims against law enforcement, $5.9 million went to plaintiffs and $3.3 million went to attorneys representing the state of South Carolina. Add the 40% of plaintiff awards going to their attorneys, there’s a total of approximately $5.66 million dollars or 61.5% of the $9.2 million dollars the state paid out went to lawyers.

 Remember, all of those statistics are all from the Insurance Reserve Fund’s website and are ONLY for the 1^st Qtr of 2024!!!

 I decided to check out some prior years to see if it was the same. Here’s what I found; the 2^nd Qtr of 2022 for just false arrest lawsuits.

 28 false arrest claims settled. Total claims paid out: $2.252 million dollars. Plaintiffs were awarded $1.539 million dollars. IRF paid their lawyers $713K dollars, which was 46.3% of the total claims paid out. Add all the lawyer’s fees together (40% of plaintiff + IRF fees), lawyers get $1.33 million dollars which is 59% of total monies paid out. Incredible!!!

 How or why do all these lawyers make all this money? Who makes all these laws giving attorneys all our money? Now, would it surprise you if I told you that about 33% of our state reps are lawyers?

Tell me, why would the state (IRF) hire these law firms for $3.3 Million dollars in 1^st qtr 2024 when they could easily hire a team of lawyers that would work directly for the IRF for a hell-of-a-lot less? This doesn’t make any sense.

 How does this relate to policing? To me, if I was a lawyer in a law firm hired by the state to defend all these lawsuits, would I want police officers to keep having about the lowest amount of training in the U.S.? Hell, YES I would. Wouldn’t you if you were a lawyer? Would you want police officers to have the BEST training in the U.S.? HELL NO, NO WAY!! If I was a lawyer, I’d want these police officers to keep screwing up big time, create as many large lawsuits as possible! I wouldn’t want them trained to know or understand the law. I would want them to continue to make me wealthy! Could that be what is going on? You tell me.

 And why does it take an average of 3 to 9 years to get a settlement of a lawsuit? Well, answer me this: If you were getting paid $175 dollars an hour, do you have any incentive to quickly negotiate a deal and get to an agreement? Or, do you have an incentive to string it out as long as possible? Do even the plaintiff’s attorneys have any incentive to quickly get to an agreement? I doubt it. The more expenses they have, the more they get.

Thanks for listening. Something has to change, and we have to find that answer for change to happen.

So, next podcast, we’ll tackle a possible new process for resolving these lawsuits, save a lot or most of this money and get police officers the training they need and should have. Hit subscribe, share your thoughts, and let’s keep this conversation going.

This podcast is ground zero. I’m not here for theories or to hear myself talk—I want real answers and input from officers who’ve walked the walk. You, me, our brothers and sisters in blue—let’s cut through the bullshit. Academics can keep talking all they want but we have to build the cure. Join me at realtalkbehindthebadge.com. Drop your state, department (active or retired), what you’ve seen, and what solutions you have in mind. The answers are out there, we just need to find them. Let’s hash out hard fixes—stuff we can shove in front of lawmakers and make stick. We are just starting this journey and we’d be pleased to have you join us. Your voices fuel this.

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Thanks to all our brothers and sisters behind the badge. Keep it going and we’ll get this fixed! Stay safe.

This is Real Talk. Signing off until next time.

Thank you and be careful out there!

Insurance reserve fund URL: https://cg.sc.gov/fiscal-transparency/sc-insurance-reserve-fund-payments