MONETARY CAPS ON COUNTY AND MUNICIPALITY LIABILITY
Leila Watson December 17th, 2008Subscribe to rss news feed
Let’s be clear on something. If you are harmed by the wrongful act of a county or municipality, you need to make certain that all your damages can be paid for $100,000, or less. This includes all your medical bills, lost wages, future lost wages and medical expenses, damaged limbs and other personal injuries and emotional distress. It does not matter that you go to trial and prove the wrongful act and the jury awards you a verdict of $1,000,000. You will only be paid $100,000 by the governmental entity and the judgment will be marked “satisfied” by the court.
In 1978, the Alabama Legislature passed a law that $100,000 would be the maximum amount that any Alabama county or municipality would have to pay to satisfy a judgment against it in an individual tort action. The motivation for the act was to ensure that the public coffers would not be emptied to pay for tort actions. This means that when a driver is caused to lose control of his or her vehicle due to dangerous and defective roadway conditions caused by a county or municipality, that the most the county or municipality will pay, regardless of the amount of any judgment against it, will be $100,000 to any individual.
One of the most tragic cases to come through our office was a little boy who was crossing a street after his school bus dropped him off, and he was struck by an oncoming motorist. He was left alive but brain damaged and was eventually discharged from the hospital to his parents’ care, requiring around the clock care with feeding, bathing, moving, turning, diapering – everything. His mother left her job to care for her son because they could not afford the nursing care that the doctors recommended. His father assumed a second job to avoid eviction and to put food on the table. The intersection where he had been hit was one of the most notorious and dangerous intersections in the city. There were no signs requiring motorists to slow down on approach, there were no stop signs or traffic signals installed, and there was no crossing guard during school hours. Any of these simple measures would have saved destruction of this family by this accident. We filed a lawsuit against the municipality that had maintained the intersection for decades, and damages were sought for his paralysis, brain damage and medical expenses, just to start the list of damages. But the only money the municipality was required to pay was $100,000.
I understand the thinking of the Alabama Legislature in 1978, and frankly, if I had been practicing back then, might have agreed. But today, the reality is that nearly every county and municipality has purchased liability insurance and no accident is ever going to empty the public bank account to pay lawsuit damages. The other reality is that the equivalent of $100,000 in 1978, is today about $300,000. There was no provision in the law to account for inflation and the value of a dollar. Counties and municipalities are not being held responsible for all the harm that they cause. In the case of my young client,the money the city paid made almost no difference in the life of that family.
Our firm and other plaintiff law firms have argued to the courts that the cap on damages should not be applied for numerous reasons, and all efforts have failed because the courts do not have the authority to raise the limits set by the Legislature. Only the Legislature can do that, and that requires a majority vote to protect a small proportion of people living and working in Alabama, including one little boy. So what do we do as plaintiff lawyers for people like the little boy? We thoroughly investigate every accident on a county or city roadway or any public work, to see if the governmental agency partnered or contracted with the private sector to perform and complete the work. We have to track down every responsible party for the public work. We have to follow every lead. But the real answer lies in the grasp of the Legislature, which alone has the power to update these limits. The cost of medical care and the hourly rate of wages lost have risen in the thirty years since passage of this act, but the law has not kept pace. The citizens are paying the cost, rather than the responsible government authority.