There’s liability, and then there’s major liability, and then there’s Los Angeles.

The question of how, and how much, to compensate victims who file civil lawsuits for damages inflicted by government entities is complicated by the fact that the people who inflicted the damage are not the ones who pay for it.

The taxpayers pay.

And every dollar the taxpayers pay out for judgments or settlements in liability cases is a dollar that can’t be spent on fixing the problem going forward, or on anything else.

This is one reason to have laws that limit civil lawsuits in some way — either by having a cut-off date for claims (a statute of limitations) or by having a standard of proof or severity that prevents some lawsuits from draining the public treasury.

In the last five years, the city of Los Angeles has paid out “at least $68.5 million,” according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times, as a result of lawsuits filed by police officers who said they were the victims of sexual harassment, racial discrimination or whistleblower retaliation.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said during a city budget presentation that some officers have tried to “weaponize” the department’s disciplinary system as a way of settling grievances. Mayor Karen Bass has blamed liability payouts more generally for contributing to the city’s $1 billion budget deficit.

But what opened the door for these civil lawsuits and costly settlements is a series of changes to the law that tilted the playing field against taxpayers and toward trial lawyers. As the city attorney’s office explained to the Times, they consider settling cases when “there could be a jury finding of liability.”

Since 2019, there have been “at least 13 verdicts or settlements worth $1 million or more,” the Times reported. There was a $949,000 payout to a female detective in the Transit Services Division who cited a hostile work environment for women.

In September 2018, shortly before leaving office, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1300, which expanded the definition of workplace harassment. Previously an employee had to prove that harassment was “severe or pervasive” in order to have a claim. But under the new definition, one remark could be enough for a lawsuit if it “unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.” SB 1300 also prohibited employers from requiring or incentivizing employees to sign a general release of claims.

SB 1300 was co-sponsored by the California Employment Lawyers Association, “a statewide organization of more than 1,000 employment law attorneys in California focused on representing plaintiffs,” according to its website.

However at the same time that Brown signed SB 1300, he vetoed another measure, Assembly Bill 1879, that would have extended the deadline to file a workplace harassment complaint from one year to three. Brown cited the need to encourage “prompt resolution while memories and evidence are fresh,” and to ensure “that unwelcome behavior is promptly reported and halted.”

The very next year, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 218, which removed the statute of limitations for filing civil complaints over childhood sexual abuse, allowing a three-year window to file claims over actions decades ago. When the window closed, nearly 7,000 claims had been filed over sexual abuse in county-run juvenile facilities and foster homes dating back as far as 1959. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a mass $4 billion settlement.

A plaintiffs’ attorney who represents more than 1,200 victims told LAist that the settlement achieves “restorative justice,” meaning not only “full and fair compensation,” but “also a societal recognition that a horrible wrong has been committed.”

L.A. County plans to pay the settlement by draining budget reserves, cutting programs, and issuing bonds that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the next five years, with huge payments continuing through fiscal year 2050-51.

The county plans to seek “validation” of the bonds in court, to give investors confidence that they won’t be challenged later. Anybody who’s interested can challenge them now through that proceeding.

How much the actual victims receive will be determined by an independent team of “allocation experts.”

There has to be a better way.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley