Apparently it is only small claims court;
Merri Nolz won a small claims judgment against the city four years ago.
“The judge looked at it and found some contributory negligence on her part, but it was slight,†said Paul Bengford, the assistant city attorney who handled the case.
By “slight,†Bengford means 10 percent. Nolz got $1,654.06, which was 90 percent of the money she’d asked for in repairs and car rental fees.
As the article continues, you will see the irony in the judgements of the city spending thousands of dollars fighting minimal claims, which got me thinking about the lawsuit in Jackson County in which the South Dakota municipal insurance COOP, Public Assurance spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending their (illegal) right to deny Native Americans a voting center that was in clear violation of Federal Law.
Or there was the denial of payment to an apartment building landlord who had their property destroyed by the SFPD SWAT team, or the flooding of Touch of Europe by a city fire hydrant.
It seems the city and Public Assurance would rather spend their money on attorney fees then actually doing the right thing and paying out claims when they are clearly negligent.
These are examples of the kind of disgusting pigs that work in the legal fields of our government, and I haven’t even mentioned our own attorney general.