City of Chicago Made a Habit of Settling

While Illinois has a reputation for being a hotbed of litigation, it’s no surprise that the City of Chicago has become quite the target for personal injury lawyers looking for a payday.

Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch recently released a study on the City of Chicago’s litigation costs, prompting the group to refer to Chicago not as the “City that Works,” but as the “City that Settles.” 

Travis Akin, executive director of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch, reports that in the last three years “Chicago has been hit with 900 lawsuits, which means City government is sued virtually every single day.” Lawsuits have cost the City of City a whopping $85 million for litigation in 2010 alone.

We don’t have to get into what $85 million could do for a city for you to understand that it’s significant, but Akin estimates that “had the City of Chicago's $85 million expenditure on litigation costs in 2010 been available for other, more worthwhile services and programs, the City would have been able to hire 1,239 police officers; pay for 1,226 teachers; hire 1,119 new public health nurses; or plant 155,801 trees.”

Maybe the Mayor Emanuel should take some notes from the Chicago Police Department, which “announced in 2009 a new policy of fighting, and no longer quickly settling, lawsuits filed against CPD.”  And the strategy that seems to be working – according to rthe CPD’s reporting, the “number of lawsuits filed against CPD dropped 50 percent from 2009 to 2010, and in lawsuits involving payouts under $100,000.”

Let’s hear it for common sense!