The city of Los Angeles is paying out lawsuit settlements at a dangerous rate, according to City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
Mejia posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday to announce a “CITY OF LA GOING BROKE ALERT,” pointing to problems in the liability claims budget.
In spite of L.A. having a budget of $87 million for lawsuits and settlements for the fiscal year, the city has already paid out $97 million — in just three months.
Of that $97 million, $59.4 million was for the Los Angeles Police Department alone.
The “miscellaneous” category came in second with $21.7 million, though Mejia noted the vast majority of that amount was for two specific incidents.
“There are ~400 accounting transactions for misc. that make up the $21.7 million,” Mejia responded to a commenter. “Here are the 2 largest that make up $18M (83%).
- $10.5M: A fixture at the top of a street lamp fell on a person’s head
- $7.5M: Person lost arm after attack from an adopted animal shelter dog.”
As Mejia pointed out, the $10.5 million did not come out of the budget of the L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting, nor did Los Angeles Animal Services pay $7.5 million or police pay nearly $60 million.
“Liability claim payouts aren’t taken out of the budgets of the individual City Department that gave rise to the liability – instead, they mostly come out of the General Fund which is mainly used to fund city services and resources for Angelenos,” Mejia said.
