Municipal lawsuits hurt taxpayers, city budgets

Dear Editor,

The verdict is in, and it is not good. Louisiana’s civil justice system has one of the worst reputations in the nation, and now the lawsuit lawyers are targeting our local governments hoping to strike it rich.

A recent study by Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch found that eight municipalities in Louisiana spent more than $52 million on litigation costs, including verdicts, settlements and payments to outside counsel, from 2006-09. Among the municipalities researched is Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government, which spent more than $3.3 million on taxpayer funded litigation costs over the four-year period.

Certainly not all lawsuits are without merit. However, many are driven by personal injury lawyers and greedy plaintiffs seeking to get rich off the perceived “deep pockets” of our local municipalities without regard for the impact that these lawsuits have on our communities.

For example, the Orleans Parish School Board recently paid more than $7 million to public school employees and staff who sued alleging they were unlawfully terminated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when hundreds of schools were damaged and destroyed. In Baton Rouge, a woman who tripped on a sidewalk sued the city -parish and received a settlement of more than $300,000. In Terrebonne, a group of bus drivers is suing and seeking “unspecified monetary damages” from the local school board alleging that changes to their bus routes have robbed them of wages and other privileges they are “entitled” to as veteran employees. There was a time when such lawsuits might have been laughed out of court. But now they must be taken seriously.

These costs to government are an unproductive use of taxpayer dollars. Our municipalities would be better off using our precious tax dollars on much-needed public services.

LLAW’s research found that in Baton Rouge, where crime is a major problem, the $10.2 million spent on litigation from 2006-09 could have been used to hire roughly 80 new police officers over the same four-year period. In New Orleans, the $14.1 million could have paid the salaries of 72 more teachers, and in Lafayette, the $6.7 million could have been used to pay salary and benefits for 30 additional fire fighters.

We cannot afford to keep paying millions of dollars in litigation costs while so many of our public institutions such as schools, hospitals, libraries and police departments are losing their funding. Lawsuits are meant to provide justice for those who have been truly wronged, not a windfall for a handful of plaintiffs and their attorneys.

Melissa Landry,

Executive Director, Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch

Baton Rouge