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Only $1,000 of $460,000 police brutality settlement goes to unsavory victim

Jimmy Higgins said:
Loren Pechtel said:
Without it there would be no justice at all--no lawyer would have taken the case given the expected payout.
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Just how much payout is needed?! Were 1500 or so hours required for this case? $100k in expenses?!
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And how do you know it wasn't reasonable?

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Nexus said:
What needs to happen is a requirement that law enforcement agencies carry "malpractice" insurance paid for out of their payroll budget. If they don't have problems within their department everyone could have a higher paycheck. If their "few bad apples" as they like to call them assault too many people the insurers can up their malpractice rates for both the individual and group until it becomes impossible for the bad cops to have a salary. Right now judging by all the jurisdictions under federal review for police misconduct the current system of suing the municipality is too far removed to be an adequate deterrent.
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I like this idea!
 
Trausti said:
There is some confusion here. The settlement was for $1,000, not $460,000. This was a civil rights claim and built into that statute is an attorney's fees provision. Attorney's fees provisions are added to certain statutes because many claims might not be brought otherwise. Like this one. The plaintiff - who was headed off to prison in any case - alleged he was kicked by cops. Excessive force? Okay. But what actual damages? It's not as if he had medical expenses or lost wages or suffered a physical or mental disability. Yeah, alright, you're rights were violated, here's $1,000. If it wasn't for the attorney's fees provision of the civil rights act few if any attorneys would take his case. But as a matter of public policy we want to prevent public actors from violating civil rights. Hence, the attorney's fees incentive. Note, reading the article is appears the lawsuit was filed in 2009 and settlement was not until this year. So five years of litigation. Five years of attorneys working up the case. Also note that the attorney's fees amount was $359,000; $100,00 was for expenses. Maybe the attorneys' fee rates were too high. Maybe they excessively billed the file. If so, criticism should fall on the city's attorneys for not more aggressively challenging the reasonableness of alleged fees and expenses.
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I see. There was no real case here, except lawyers scamming public for $460K.
I wonder who would take that case and how much they would charge the public? :)
 
Derec said:
Loren Pechtel said:
And how do you know it wasn't reasonable?
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They got their client $1000, which is about 67 cents per billable hour. Doesn't sound very reasonable to me.
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It sounds like their case gradually fell apart. The officers were later found to be innocent and to have acted within police protocols and were rehired.

With 20/20 hindsight they probably should have settled earlier and got the guy more without ringing up the bills. But we don't know what we don't know at the time.

It's also possible they were complete scumbags who took advantage of the situation to run up some big bills. This can't be determined from a brief news story.
 
barbos said:
Trausti said:
There is some confusion here. The settlement was for $1,000, not $460,000. This was a civil rights claim and built into that statute is an attorney's fees provision. Attorney's fees provisions are added to certain statutes because many claims might not be brought otherwise. Like this one. The plaintiff - who was headed off to prison in any case - alleged he was kicked by cops. Excessive force? Okay. But what actual damages? It's not as if he had medical expenses or lost wages or suffered a physical or mental disability. Yeah, alright, you're rights were violated, here's $1,000. If it wasn't for the attorney's fees provision of the civil rights act few if any attorneys would take his case. But as a matter of public policy we want to prevent public actors from violating civil rights. Hence, the attorney's fees incentive. Note, reading the article is appears the lawsuit was filed in 2009 and settlement was not until this year. So five years of litigation. Five years of attorneys working up the case. Also note that the attorney's fees amount was $359,000; $100,00 was for expenses. Maybe the attorneys' fee rates were too high. Maybe they excessively billed the file. If so, criticism should fall on the city's attorneys for not more aggressively challenging the reasonableness of alleged fees and expenses.
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I see. There was no real case here, except lawyers scamming public for $460K.
I wonder who would take that case and how much they would charge the public? :)
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There was a case. There was a video which showed officers beating the guy after the crash. The guy sued the city. The city eventually settled.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Just how much payout is needed?! Were 1500 or so hours required for this case? $100k in expenses?!
Click to expand...

And how do you know it wasn't reasonable?
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I can only speak anecdotally, but the engineering equivalent of effort for 1500 hours is a decent sized project. This is a single case. Working on a $300 million project would make me personally work more than 1500 hours over the period of 2 years, but that'd be a $300 million project!
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Loren Pechtel said:
And how do you know it wasn't reasonable?
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I can only speak anecdotally, but the engineering equivalent of effort for 1500 hours is a decent sized project. This is a single case. Working on a $300 million project would make me personally work more than 1500 hours over the period of 2 years, but that'd be a $300 million project!
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It's not efficient in terms of what they got for their client. I don't consider that a proper yardstick in this sort of case, though--scum are unlikely to collect much in lawsuits, if you don't have a separate legal cost recovery then no lawyer will touch the cases and the thugs can act with near impunity.

The proper yardstick is the effect it has on their behavior, not on the money collected for their clients.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
I can only speak anecdotally, but the engineering equivalent of effort for 1500 hours is a decent sized project. This is a single case. Working on a $300 million project would make me personally work more than 1500 hours over the period of 2 years, but that'd be a $300 million project!
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It's not efficient in terms of what they got for their client. I don't consider that a proper yardstick in this sort of case, though--scum are unlikely to collect much in lawsuits, if you don't have a separate legal cost recovery then no lawyer will touch the cases and the thugs can act with near impunity.

The proper yardstick is the effect it has on their behavior, not on the money collected for their clients.
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One day, I may just find out how that was even remotely related to what I said.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Loren Pechtel said:
It's not efficient in terms of what they got for their client. I don't consider that a proper yardstick in this sort of case, though--scum are unlikely to collect much in lawsuits, if you don't have a separate legal cost recovery then no lawyer will touch the cases and the thugs can act with near impunity.

The proper yardstick is the effect it has on their behavior, not on the money collected for their clients.
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One day, I may just find out how that was even remotely related to what I said.
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The point is you're calling it out of line based on the wrong yardstick.
 
dismal said:
barbos said:
I see. There was no real case here, except lawyers scamming public for $460K.
I wonder who would take that case and how much they would charge the public? :)
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There was a case. There was a video which showed officers beating the guy after the crash. The guy sued the city. The city eventually settled.
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$1000 is hardly a case. It's merely an excuse to scam taxpayers out of $460k
 
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