Council Adopts Plan to Reduce Lawsuits

Hoping to avoid future lawsuits, the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday adopted a policy to ensure that hazards on city streets and facilities are repaired after the city is sued.

Councilman Mike Feuer, who represents parts of the southeast San Fernando Valley, proposed the policy because he believes that some public hazards prompt many lawsuits before they are repaired.

The city attorney’s office currently works with various departments that are involved in lawsuits related to hazardous streets or parks or problem employees within those departments.

But often the communication between the city attorney and the department does not focus on repairing the problem but on fighting or settling the lawsuit, a city report says.

Under Feuer’s policy, the city attorney’s office will send a report to the department manager involved in litigation, requesting repairs to avoid future suits. Feuer proposed the policy partly in response to a series of lawsuits resulting from fatal car accidents on a stretch of road in Sun Valley that routinely flooded following heavy rains.

The city paid out nearly $2 million to settle three wrongful-death lawsuits that resulted from crashes on La Tuna Canyon Road. But repairs were not made on the road until a Times article reported on the problem.