Reading the lawsuit makes your head throb. You don’t ache for the plaintiff, known forevermore as “falsely accused I-10 Freeway Shooter Leslie Merritt Jr.” Instead, you hurt for us, the taxpayers.

That’s because someday soon the human wallets who comprise Arizona and Maricopa County’s taxpaying citizenry surely will pay Merritt and his cartel of fancy ambulance chasers a massive jackpot.

Legal documents filed on behalf of this 22-year-old landscaper and father of two mention a $10 million tab in return for Merritt’s trouble. That totals $46,728.97 for each of the 214 days Merritt spent in Fourth Avenue Jail. If that sounds steep, keep in mind Merritt wants compensation for “severe physical pain, mental anguish, and emotional distress, medical expenses, and lost wages.”

Plus, there’s the indignity cited in Paragraph 71 of the lawsuit: That investigators “placed him in a small room” before Merritt was questioned about the freeway shootings. Cha-ching!

This legal cloud does come with one silver lining. Hours after Merritt’s arrest last September, Gov. Doug Ducey famously tweeted, “We got him!” Despite those three words—and an exclamation point!—Ducey was skipped as a defendant. Why?

“Millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars, have been spent on the botched investigation, the wrongful arrest and the malicious prosecution,” one of Merritt’s lawyers thundered forth on the courthouse steps. “We just don’t think it’s appropriate for the taxpayers to have to foot the bill for basically what amounts to a split-second error in judgment.”

Gosh, such nobility. I’m not sure who Team Merritt thinks will foot the bill on behalf of the defendants they did sue, but here’s a news flash: Since every dollar the government has come from taxpayers, it’s us.

Which brings me to the irksome assumption at the root of lawsuits like this one and the parade of legal filings against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. While I have no penetrating insight into the freeway investigation, whether it was faulty, as Merritt’s mouthpieces claim, or whether police and prosecutors were negligent, here’s what I do know: We live in a culture that requires us to attach a dollar figure to every error, every moment of emotional distress and every unfortunate event.

Civil courtrooms today function like a marathon episode of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” It’s big business for lawyers who “volunteer” to take cases like Merritt’s in return for a percentage of the payday. Meanwhile, the sue-early-and-often mentality creates big hits for beleaguered taxpayers forced to pay off claimants with funds that could instead go to schools, roads and, yes, endowing crime labs with better technology and better-trained personnel.

Again, I’m not offering a verdict on the actions of Merritt or the cops and prosecutors involved in this investigation. That’s what trials are for, a fact lost on Merritt’s lawyers, who for a year have done most of their lawyering in the media. What I’m saying is, even if every allegation in this lawsuit is true, I don’t believe the outcome should be multiple millions paid by Merritt’s neighbors—6 million people who have done zero to afflict the plaintiff.

In the end, say Merritt takes home a cool $10 million. That’s $1.67 for every man, woman and child in Arizona. Siphoning that sum from the public coffers will make the criminal justice system worse, not better.

Imagine instead if we used Merritt’s payday to build a new crime lab: The Leslie Merritt Jr. Institute of Investigative Science. Then he could feel honored in perpetuity while we taxpayers would get better public safety in a building with no “small rooms.”

You know, so no one ever again has to suffer even the slightest bit of claustrophobia.

– David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Reach him at [email protected].