A Fair and Just Legal System Also Needs Moderation

October 9th, 2009. By Hunter West

Important as it is for citizens to have legal recourse to sue in order to right a wrong, do you sometimes wonder if things are getting a bit out of hand? 

Case in point: in 2002 a detective with the New York Police Department (NYPD) accidentally shot himself in the knees while sitting on a chair and trying to holster his revolver. The following year he retired on a three-quarters disability pension and is now employed as a court officer in South Carolina making $24,000 annually. 

He also sued the City of New York and last November was awarded $4.5 million in damages by a jury. 

For accidentally shooting himself in the knee. For that kind money maybe we should all do that. 

Obviously, the former NYPD man found himself a talented lawyer who presumably argued that the revolver, issued by the department, was faulty. As the NYPD is an agent of the City, the Big Apple would be on the hook. 

Keep in mind that if we are injured, or victimized in concert with a situation or event through no fault of our own, we should have the right to seek compensation. 

Case in point: the scores of women who have unknowingly put themselves in harm’s way by simply subscribing to Yaz birth control. They believed Yaz (and Yasmin) to be a safe and effective oral contraceptive, only to find out the hard way about risks for life-threatening blood clots and thrombosis. Women—painfully young, healthy women—have died. 

And then there are the thousands of California workers who are robbed of their right to claim, or earn overtime pay all because of misguided regulation, or greedy employers who circumvent the rules. Your employer should not own your life, but many in the California IT community attempt just that. 

Thus, for many a lawsuit to right a wrong is not only their lone recourse for justice, sometimes it’s necessary just to get their bloody attention. 

But where does one draw the line? 

If I slip on a freshly mopped floor in a restaurant that has no signage and thus no warning that the floor is wet and slippery, then I have a case. However if I buy a hot cup of coffee that I know is hot and is contained in a cup that screams “Contents are hot” and I then proceed to spill that coffee, by my own accord, down into my lap and scald my private parts, is it right for me to sue the restaurant? 

C’mon. Accidents happen. I was careless. It’s on my own head. Why should I hold the restaurant accountable, or for that matter even attempt to? Legally, I guess I can—but morally, is it right? 

They’re calling New York City ‘Sue York City’ these days, given the litigation on the books and the size of awards that have grown in leaps and bounds over the years. 

Last year it cost Sue York City $568 million in settlement money. This year, at the conclusion of 2009 fiscal it will be $554 million. That’s more than double what it paid out 15 years ago and 20 times what it forked over in 1979. 

It’s more than the City spends on parks, transportation and the policing and firefighting for Staten Island combined. 

The average settlement is up to nearly $75,000 from an average of $14,396 in 1984. 

There are various reasons for this, according to an October 4th report in the Staten Island Advance. In New York State litigants can sue municipalities in jury trials, rather than state claims court where a judge arbitrates claims and awards are usually lower. There is also no cap on non-economic awards, unlike 24 other states that have them. 

The City of Sue York might also want to take a page out of the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC). With responsibility for 11 public hospitals, the HHC is the lone City agency that has lawsuit damages taken directly out of its own budget, rather than out of a general City fund. Thus, the HHC is very careful about its risk management and has seen claims against it drop by 17 percent over the past decade. 

In comparison, claims against the NYPD grew by 32 percent over the same period. 

Naturally, not all lawsuits are frivolous—not by a long shot. Look at what happened during the 2003 Staten Island Ferry crash. Those victims deserved compensation. And even the case where the teen from Travis, New York was walking along the sidewalk and fell into a sewer after workmen had removed the cover and gone to fetch some hazard cones, is worthy of a claim (and she is suing). Yes, she was texting on her phone and wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. We all love to gang up on the kids for their endless texting. “The kid should have been paying attention,” you might say. 

But then again, it could have been you, or me just walking along on a fall day and looking around at the fall colors. Manhole covers are dark. So too, is the color of an open manhole. Someone simply glancing at the periphery of where they are going could easily translate the blackness as a dark cover. Anyone with bad eyesight would have the same problem. The teen could have been hurt. 

Even if the victim is deemed to be 99 percent at fault, if the City of New York is assessed even one percent liability, then the City pays. 

Sue York City mayor Michel Bloomberg says the litigation payouts are killing the City. Well, maybe the City needs to tighten up the rules, and put some reforms into the system. 

And while lawyers need to represent their clients to the best of their abilities, maybe there needs to be a new emphasis on the merits of a proposed case. Does it have merit? Is it winnable? Will it make a point? 

Or, is it just stupid? The Advance heard from one veteran New York City Law Department Official who said that as the economy worsens, people tend to opt for a lawsuit more frequently. 

We can’t really blame the litigants, who hear of boffo awards for seemingly insignificant hurts and want to cash in—just as you can’t blame the baseball player for making millions playing a game for a living. If I were a baseball player, I’d line up for a fat contract myself. Don’t blame the player. It’s the market that values a single player in the millions of dollars and is willing to pay him accordingly, that is out of whack. 

So somebody is going to come in and say, “I went to this restaurant and ordered a hot coffee, and they gave it to me and then I went and spilled it down my front and burned myself silly, and now I want to sue that damn restaurant ’cause they failed to tell me it was hot and failed to warn me not to spill it down my front…” 

And maybe the prospective defense lawyer, from time to time, needs to say, “yah…I could take the case…but I’m not going to. Nor should you pursue it.” 

“Sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own actions.” 

Frivolous cases just serve to further clog a choked system, making it harder for legitimate cases to be tried in a timely manner. Mushrooming awards choke municipalities, drive up insurance premiums and decimate funds for vital municipal services. In turn, municipal taxes shoot skyward at a time when people are still hurting economically. 

Moderation is the key to most things in life. One could argue that the legal system could use some.  

Tags: California Overtime, lawsuits, New York, Yasmin, Yaz

This was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Court of Public Opinion . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.