The city shelled out a near-record $563 million in 2009 to settle thousands of lawsuits ranging from car crashes to employee discrimination — and even made a six-figure payout to a criminal who sued the cops.
Alleged Queens drug dealer Roger Bissoon pocketed $150,000, the result of a nine-year-old police-brutality case in which he claimed cops broke his jaw while he was handcuffed.
City ‘Looted’ for $563M
Settlements shot up to a near-record this year.
The city shelled out a near-record $563 million in 2009 to settle thousands of lawsuits ranging from car crashes to employee discrimination — and even made a six-figure payout to a criminal who sued the cops.
Alleged Queens drug dealer Roger Bissoon pocketed $150,000, the result of a nine-year-old police-brutality case in which he claimed cops broke his jaw while he was handcuffed.
Bissoon sued for $1 million in 2001 and got his check on April 16 this year — four months after he was busted for threatening to “shoot and kill” his girlfriend and carrying three bags of crack. He pleaded guilty to drug possession after menacing and harassment charges were dropped.
“In light of his two jaw surgeries and the evidence, we believed that there was a substantial likelihood a jury could have awarded substantially more than $150,000 and that a subsequent offense, nine years later, would not have made a difference,” said Fay Leoussis, who heads the Law Department’s tort division.
The $563 million total involved about 7,000 cases, all but 31 of them settlements, as opposed to jury verdicts. The city almost never goes to trial — just 115 of the 2009 cases ever got to court.
The biggest payout went to Staten Island ferry-crash victim James McMillan, who got $18 million after the 2003 accident left him a quadriplegic. That case and other ferry-crash settlements cost the city $45 million in 2009.
Payouts during the fiscal year increased by $35 million over last year’s $528 million and nearly tied the 2001 record of $564 million, the Law Department said.
About 90 percent of this year’s millions went to settle personal injury cases, many involving people who were maimed on city roads and streets.
Others who sued made dubious claims but got paid anyway simply to help reduce a massive backlog of cases.
“There are some cases of dubious merit that present factual questions which a jury may decide against a defendant,” said Fay Leoussis, who heads the Law Department’s tort division. “Instead of risking a very large verdict, a decision is sometimes made to settle.”
Leoussis said the city has instituted several reforms to drive down costs. She said the agency’s main focus was to quickly dispatch frivolous new claims and make fair offers sooner for those with merit.
“We now try to settle these cases in 18 months — it used to be seven years,” she said.
Shomrim sueing
The Shomrim Six should look in to the matter to see if they can sue. a six week trial for nothing should be a reason to sue the city. how did they prosecute such a case and why?
Who cares about the why.
cracked
i agree that the shomrim should sue; however, this is our tax money!
Shomrim Sueing
“i agree that the shomrim should sue; however, this is our tax money!”
The waist of a time case was also our tax money. Comes to show that they don’t care to go after innocent people, because after all you pay the bill either way.
Blame the victims
You should be ashamed for running this story with it’s absurd slanted viewpoint.
If the city is at fault the law provides for litigation, our tax dollars are “looted” by the city everyday by paying cops who break the law, special interests groups, the bottomless pit of the MTA, etc., etc
The author would like to deny justice to those who have broken the law, would that include say Rubashkin?
That isn’t the way it works in this country. Maybe the author should be criticising the city for screwing up and opening the door to these suits, rather than the victims who ever they be
ceo
people keep saying: catch the crooks in the system. Keep saying it and maybe one day it will happen.
there aer so many people who are not making their own lives better, who need to be stopped from milking the system.
antimesira
the “system” can do milking to.
if a person is innocent he has a right to get paid for his troubles. just b/c somebody was arrested does not make him guilty. Thats why we have detectives, they showed do their jobs. The DA as well should not make something out of nothing.