Payments down from more than $70M year before

LANSING – Michigan taxpayers paid significantly less last year to settle lawsuits against their state government than they did in recent years, but more than they typically have over the last decade.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2015, state departments paid about $41.8 million in lawsuit settlements and judgements, according to a report from the Senate Fiscal Agency posted online Wednesday.

That amount is less than the more than $70 million paid in 2014, the nearly $86 million paid in 2013 and the more than $76 million in 2012, when lawsuit payments ballooned from just under $16 million the year before because of lawsuit’s over the state’s business taxes. Payments dipped this year with no big payments to make on such cases.

But, with the Michigan Department of Corrections still paying off a $100 million class-action settlement related to sexual abuse allegations against corrections officers, last year’s lawsuit costs are much higher than the $9.4 million paid in 2006.

Corrections accounted for nearly two-thirds of the state’s lawsuit costs last year, but the department’s final payment in that class-action suit was made Oct. 14, 2015, the report said.

Michigan comes out ahead in the lawsuit game, thanks almost entirely to more than $200 million coming from Michigan’s share of a 1998 settlement between states and tobacco companies.

But outgoing payments show how the missteps and misdeeds of state government and its employees can cost taxpayers.

The Michigan State Police, for example, paid nearly $8 million last year, almost all of it to settle a wrongful death lawsuit in which a trooper killed a motorist during a high-speed chase in 2014.

The state has paid nearly $237 million since 1983 in cases claiming negligent highway maintenance, though only $5,500 was paid last year in a settlement with a pedestrian who was injured after falling on a state highway.

The state paid nearly $1.5 million in settlements on six cases in which state employees alleged discrimination or harassment by their supervisors.

Sometimes, Michiganders pay for the state’s policy choices.

The state Department of Technology, Management & Budget paid $3.5 million in lawsuit costs last year, for example, with the biggest payment going to the attorneys who won the landmark case at the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned same-sex marriage bans in Michigan and elsewhere.

As in that case, lawsuits also can force the state into reforms.

The state paid $310,000 in attorney fees last year, for example, on a 2008 case that highlighted failures in the state’s foster care system and forced an overhaul. After the lawsuit, the state hired more caseworkers, changed the way it provided health care to foster children and is currently exploring changes to the way it pays foster care contractors to encourage better outcomes for kids.

Departments also try to learn from their mistakes and implement their own reforms.

Corrections Director Heidi Washington, for example, “has implemented a post-litigation review process that is meant to identify needed areas of change, areas of risk and changes to policies and procedures that are needed moving forward,” spokesman Chris Gautz said in an email to the State Journal. “We have begun the review process meetings and will be implementing changes associated with the discussions that arise from them.”

With the Corrections lawsuit paid off, legal payments in the current fiscal year could be much less — depending on what happens in Flint.

Gov. Rick Snyder and the state face numerous lawsuits after lead leeched into Flint’s drinking water system because the state failed to add the chemicals needed to prevent corrosion of the pipes when the city switched to a new water supply.

Snyder’s legal defense already is costing taxpayers about $6,500 a day before any verdicts or settlements have been reached.

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