LA spends more on legal payouts to people hurt on our streets than making them safer
In 2015, a woman was killed crossing Vista Del Mar, and the City paid out $9.5M in a wrongful death case.
In 2017, then Councilmember Mike Bonin led the charge to improve safety on Vista Del Mar, reconfiguring the street with fewer travel lanes, more crosswalks, and new bike lanes. However, there was an outcry from some people, and then Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the street restored (to its original dangerous state).
In 2021, a mother was killed and her child injured as she crossed Vista Del Mar — leading to another multi-million dollar payout.
In 2024, two teens were killed on the same road — likely leading to more millions in another wrongful death lawsuit.
Last week, on the same exact street, two cars crashed into each other, leading to the death of a woman walking on the beach path.
While Vista Del Mar may be an extreme example, the facts are simple: the city has paid out tens of millions of dollars in settlements to people that have been killed or injured on a street, after reversing street safety improvements that would have made the crashes less likely. If that’s not the definition of insanity, I don’t know what is.
With Los Angeles now facing a $1B budget deficit, the Mayor’s budget, due next month, is likely to not just eliminate vacant positions (like last year) but also lay off hundreds or even thousands of city employees. How did we get here? The main driver is that Mayor Bass agreed to massive raises for the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Fire Department, and civil employees, with no plan to pay for any of it. Combined with lower than expected revenues, the horrific fires (that also deprive the city of taxes from some of the wealthiest parts of Los Angeles), and liability payouts, it’s an economic toxic soup.
According to the City Administrative Officer — an unelected bureaucrat who most Angelenos have never heard of, but who wields extraordinary power over the city — liability payouts have exploded. While the City budgeted $100M, it now expects to pay out over $320M in liability claims. This compares to just around $100M total for fiscal year 2022. As CAO Matt Szabo stated at a City Council meeting on March 19: “every dollar that goes towards a liability payout in a lawsuit reduces a city service.”
According to City Controller Kenneth Mejia, so far this year, the city has paid out $33M to people hurt in traffic collisions, and $38M due to people being hurt on our streets (sidewalk trip and fall claims, or people getting hit by cars crossing the street, for example). That’s $71M — or nearly double what we’ve given LADOT for programs like Vision Zero.
What has happened to our city, where we spend more in paying out people hurt in our streets than we spend making them safer? Aside from the morality factor — we live in a city where a pedestrian is injured every five hours and killed every two days — this is a fiscally insane way to live.
Last year, Los Angeles voters passed Measure HLA by a nearly two thirds margin, which showed there is a huge hunger by Angelenos to make the streets safer. Instead of charging forward, the City has instead spent over a year figuring out how to implement the will of the voters and, in some cases, fighting with regional agencies on implementation.
On March 19 at City Council, the CAO stated that “plaintiffs attorneys are getting rich at the expense of taxpayers and city services.” I couldn’t agree with him more. However, as the City figures out how to plug a $1B gap, it’s likely to cut departments that work on street safety even more — including the Bureau of Street Services, and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation — making future injuries, and lawsuits, more likely.
Already reeling from cuts in last year’s budget, the Bureau of Street Services — the agency responsible for repaving our streets and fixing our sidewalks — is currently struggling to just stay afloat from a maintenance point of view. The state of repair of our streets and our sidewalks is deteriorating faster than they can repair them — increasing the likelihood of additional lawsuits going forward. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation — responsible for how we use our streets — is also struggling to implement even basic safety improvements; its budget was cut so severely last fiscal year, that the Department currently doesn’t have enough money for road paint and signage.
I want to live in a city where we fix the underlying causes of problems, and not just budget for the inevitable lawsuits that come from people being hit and killed on our streets. We can and must do better — not just to save lives, but to save money.