City settlements costing taxpayers

When city employees make mistakes on the job it can cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in lawsuits. The I-team looked at what lawsuits people are filing against the city for and found many of the mistakes are preventable.

More than 600 times in the past five years the city wrote a check after getting sued, costing you more than $1.5 million.

Larnzy McLelland spends many afternoons sitting on his porch, watching a tree, worrying and waiting.

"The tree hangs right over my house. The limb is dead."

He says city inspectors told him they would cut it down a few years ago. But last month, when he sent the I-team pictures; the tree was still standing, barely.

Fallen branches from the dead limb destroyed McLelland's windshield, but it could have been worse.

"We know that by limbs falling someone's life is in jeopardy."

Another tree listed for removal on Chase Street in June of 2008 blew over during a storm and nearly destroyed a home. The owners sued and won, costing Toledo taxpayers $5,000.

In fact there were 89 cases for damages connected to trees the city hadn't cut down or pot holes it hadn't repaired. The settlements cost taxpayers.

Toledo paid about $10,000 for city drivers knocking down mailboxes and $429,000 in settlements for nearly 250 car accidents.

Councilman Mike Collins says he'll propose more training for drivers of city owned vehicles. He admits the problem is bigger than training.

"We've demolished the wrong house. We've also sold stolen cars and those are errors."

We discovered a case where the city knocked down the wrong house and paid the owner $28,000.

Taxpayers are on the hook for lawsuits filed against Carty too. There have been three cases involving the mayor. In January 2007 the mayor locked out radio station WSPD staff members from news conferences. Here's what he had to say at the time:

"Serious newsmakers in Toledo, oh and serious news reporters should be embarrassed by some of the things that they do and I don't have to tolerate some of the things that one man in particular does."

WSPD sued and the city paid $18,571. Collins says Finkbeiner should pay the money back.

"I don't think it should be a burden on the taxpayers of the city," says Collins.

We gave the mayor a week's notice about our story to talk about these lawsuits which have cost taxpayers more than $1.5 million, but he had no comment.

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