Providence Spends $1M on Legal Settlements

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Stephen Beale, GoLocalProv News Contributor

The City of Providence spent just over $1 million last year settling lawsuits and legal claims ranging from a lawsuit over infringement of freedom of speech to hundreds of pothole claims, according to documents provided in response to a records request.

Providence spent the most settling personal injury cases stemming from motor vehicle accidents involving a city vehicle. Those cost a total of $325,900 in 2014. Lawsuits over slips and falls came in second, at $123,700, and legal claims filed after sewer backups damaged private property totaled $119,569.

Pothole claims on the rise

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By far the highest number of legal claims filed with the city was for damage to cars and other vehicles caused by potholes. In all, there were 391 of them last year, totaling $95,399.

It likely costs the city more to pay the claims—an administrative process which bypasses the court system—than it would to actually fill the potholes. On average, not counting labor, it costs between $20 and $30 to fix a pothole. For the 391 pothole claims last year, that comes out to a total maximum road repair cost of $11,730—and that’s assuming that each claim was for a different pothole, not a repeat offender. (The city records provided did not specify pothole locations.)

Even including labor the cost of the claims may still be higher. In the winter of 2012 to 2013, Providence had spent a total of $45,000 filling potholes as of mid-March 2013, according to a WJAR.com report.

The number and cost of claims also appear to be on the rise.

In December 2011, GoLocalProv reported that as of August of that year the city had paid out $65,000 in pothole claims—a figure that represented an increase of 70 percent over the previous year.

One Providence councilman says the city’s recent $40 million road re-paving project should have cleared any backlog of pothole repairs. This spring, Councilman Michael Correia predicts that pothole claims will decline by at least half from the 2014 figure, thanks to the recent road work.

“That should alleviate a lot of these pothole claims,” said, Correia, a member of the council’s Committee on Claims and Pending Suits and the new chairman of the Committee on Public Works.

City council reviews settlements

Each claim for pothole damage is capped at $300 and can be fulfilled only when two estimates of repair costs, plus a police report, are provided to city authorities, according to Correia. The final decision on whether to fulfill or deny a claim is made by the Committee on Claims and Pending Suits, which normally acts upon the recommendations of the Law Department.

The committee also reviews legal claims filed for slips and falls, collisions between city vehicles and other vehicles, and other cases where the city is liable for property damage or personal injury. Most claims filed with the city are for small amounts. But some, such as claims on property damage caused by backed up sewers can be significant.

In addition to legal claims, which are filed directly with the city instead of in court, the Committee on Claims and Pending Suits also reviews the status of lawsuits and authorizes city attorneys to settle cases at certain amounts. Last year, the city paid out $711,795 to settle lawsuits (not counting the amounts for legal claims). Correia said those settlements save the city from possibly having to pay out even more in court. In some cases, he said the city has been able to settle for a fourth of what a plaintiff was seeking in court.

Councilman wants streamlined process

Councilman Sam Zurier, an attorney and the expected new chairman of the Committee on Claims and Pending Suits, wants the process for reviewing claims to be improved. “My own goals for that committee are how to speed up the settlement of claims,” Zurier said.

The current process, Zurier said, results in meetings that are clogged with small cases. A typical meeting agenda for the committee may be stacked with 40 cases, with about 30 of them for amounts a thousand dollars of less, according to Zurier. Under the city charter, some claims can be settled administratively, without review from the city council. He said administrative review should be sufficient for smaller claims.  

Zurier said he also wants to more information on how much the city is paying out for legal claims, what those claims are for, and how long payment is taking. In the case of potholes, he said the city needs to weigh not only the cost of repair against the cost of claims, but also the happiness of the public. Even if repairs cost slightly more than claims, he suggested it’s still better to do the repairs.

“There are a number of variables in the equation to consider,” Zurier concluded.

Lawsuit plaintiff: City ‘flushed’ money down the toilet

One of the single biggest settlements paid out in 2014 was $75,000 for a federal lawsuit filed by Judith Reilly, a citizen activist who was barred by Providence police from handing out flyers on a sidewalk outside a public high school where then-Mayor David Cicilline was giving his annual State of the City speech in early 2010.

But Reilly says hardly any of the money went to her. Instead, almost all of it covered expenses for her attorney, Richard Sinapi, who is affiliated with the ACLU. “I did not make out like a bandit and neither did my lawyer,” Reilly said.

At the end of the day, Reilly said she got just $500 as compensation for missing about two and a half days of work to attend depositions and a brief trial.

Reilly said the city could easily have avoided the $75,000 pay-out. She said she and her attorney gave city attorneys every opportunity to settle. “It’s important to note that the city did that to themselves,” said Reilly, a former Providence resident who now lives in Massachusetts. “Their attorneys spent as much time as possible [and] fought to the last second.”

In fact, Reilly said the entire lawsuit could have been averted had the city simply responded to the citizen complaint she filed with the Police Department. “The city basically flushed $75,000 down the toilet,” Reilly said. “They could have resolved this complaint for zero dollars. It went to the ACLU because they put my complaint into limbo forever.”

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Related Slideshow: Providence Legal Settlements

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