Boston has to shell out more than $4 million in settlements and judgments to resolve at least 42 lawsuits against the city this year alone — and racked up a $14 million bill over the previous five years to close the books on cases that range from stiffing contractors to discrimination suits to an allegation of wrongful death.
Since the start of 2016, the city will have paid out at least $18.4 million in more than 300 settlements and judgments to close out suits, according to data obtained by a Boston Herald records request.
This calendar year, the city is due to pay at least $4.2 million in at least 42 settlements or judgments, compared to about $4.6 million in 40 payments in 2020 and just over $798,000 in 47 chunks in 2019, per the data.
That includes $6.4 million in 57 pieces in 2018, $1.5 million in 63 in 2017, and just over $946,000 in 50 in 2016.
The data that came back this week from the records request, which the Herald made in July, lists settlements — instances in which both sides agreed to a payout from the city, with stipulations — through the end of this August, as well as from the same time period a small handful of rarer judgments, which come from when a judge, jury or other body hears the evidence and orders the city to fork over some cash.
That means the data doesn’t include, at the very least, one that splashed into the news earlier this week: a $2 million judgment that a jury awarded to Boston Police Lt. Detective Donna Gavin after ruling that her boss Capt. Detective Mark Hayes had discriminated against her because of her gender and then retaliated when she took issue. This money hasn’t been paid yet, and the city has until Dec. 1 to file an appeal.
That’s the third-largest sum that the city’s had to shell out in this manner since the start of 2016, according to the data. The largest came in 2018 when Boston agreed to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit from the family of Kyzr Willis, a 7-year-old boy who drowned two years earlier at a city swim camp.
The other seven-figure settlement — which, like the Willis settlement, was widely reported at the time — came in 2020 to former Boston firefighter Nathalie Fontanez, who had sued the city alleging that her colleagues had sexually harassed her and that she’d then been denied a promotion for complaining about it.
Then there are 17 more payouts in the six-figure category, including four this year. The fourth-largest sum of the past six years came in February when the city settled for $613,919 with Daniel O’Connell’s Sons, a Holyoke company that claimed Boston didn’t pay it for extra work the company did at the city’s behest on what would become the Eliot K-8 school in the North End.
Per the settlement agreement, the city’s Public Facilities Department also had to hand over an additional $390,000 it had been holding back as the contract dispute played out.
Typically, the settlement agreements also include both sides waiving any claim to further sue on the matter. They also normally stipulate that the city denies liability or wrongdoing.
Such was the case for another high-dollar amount this year when the city settled with the Regis family in Brighton over allegations that Boston Police had busted into their apartment in the middle of the night, shoved down and cuffed several members — only to realize it was the wrong apartment than the number on their “no-knock” search warrant.
The city paid the family of five an even $500,000 in March to close out a federal suit, and the agreement that the city signed says that Boston “expressly denies any wrongdoing” and that the settlement is simply to avoid the future costs of ongoing litigation. Of the suits since 2016, 20 like this are for “Civil Rights – Police,” leading to payouts of just under $1.9 million.
Fourteen of the 300-plus payouts over that time come from employment claims, and 13 from discrimination claims, including allegations of gender and racial discrimination.
Other sizable payouts from this year include more than $196,000 going to GF Mackin Construction after the company had claimed it had a contract to do ongoing repairs for the Boston School District — which allegedly stopped paying them for the work.
There’s also a case that was before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in which the city paid firefighter Sheila Leahy $155,000 this year after she had alleged sexual harassment in a suit that dates back years.
Judgments are uncommon, as both sides often attempt to settle to avoid paying for years-long lawsuits and trials — and try to eschew the unpredictability of placing the matters in a judge’s or jury’s hands. But in addition to the Gavin one, the city lost another this year, having to pay Jeffrey McMahon $77,000 after the courts found that the Department of Neighborhood Development had shorted him on the assessment of the co-op unit he had via a covenant with the city.
Many of the settlements are insurance claims, with big companies taking the city to court in instances in which Boston hasn’t paid them. These generally come from allegations in which a city-owned car hit someone, or a person injured themselves on city property.
For example, Boston in February agreed to pay a woman $500 after she said someone crashed a city car into her vehicle at the intersection of Blue Hill Avenue and American Legion Highway. Safety Insurance was looking for a bit more than double that, but the city wouldn’t fork it over, the company claimed, and they eventually just settled.
In one odd-seeming case this year, the city reports actually gaining one dollar in a case in which someone sued the Zoning Board of Appeals over denial of some work proposed for a house’s patio. There was no other information about that disposition immediately available.
The city sets aside a few million bucks a year under the assumption that they are going to have to shell out some of it. This fiscal year — this past July through this coming June — the budget includes $5 million for settlements and judgments against the city, according to a spokeswoman for Mayor Michelle Wu.
The year-to-year actual total payouts vary widely, driven by when the relatively rare big-money settlements or judgments land, the data demonstrate.The trial courts’ online case search shows 528 cases with “City of Boston” as a defendant that remain open. The federal court search has another nine.
0 comments:
Post a Comment