Receipts is a weekly spotlight on how the city of Houston and Harris County spend your tax money, with a focus on the everyday things most residents may take for granted. Got something you want us to look at? Email José at jose@houstonlanding.org.
Anytime the city of Houston is hit with a lawsuit, taxpayers end up footing the bill. And the city gets hit with a lot of lawsuits.
In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the city’s litigation costs topped more than $7 million each year.
“First of all, it’s just the cost of doing business. If you’re providing 30 or 40 or however many city services to several thousand people, you’re going to be sued for something,” said James Thurmond, a professor at University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs and former city manager for Cleveland, Uvalde, and Missouri City, Texas.
The city counted more than $673 million dollars in litigation and claims in its 2024 annual comprehensive financial report. Most of that was due to the $661 million settlement the city reached with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association regarding backpay, which was paid for with general-obligation bonds.
Without the firefighter settlement, the city’s total litigation costs in fiscal 2024 reached $12.3 million, less than 1 percent of the city’s general fund budget.
“You may be sued but you don’t want to make a pattern of it. So, if you’re sued for something, you know, you’d have to look at your lawsuit, your litigation and make sure it’s not one particular department, one operation, or one individual or a particular type of problem that keeps you referring,” Thurmond said.
The Houston Landing obtained a line-item breakdown of the 165 legal settlements and 290 claims paid by the city that year. Among them:
- A court ordered the city to spend $1.2 million on attorney’s costs in a lawsuit dating back to 2004, accusing the city of failing to respond to public information requests by a death row inmate and his lawyers, as reported by Law.com
- The city reached an $850,000 settlement in a case in which a firefighter’s private videos were shared among her co-workers, as reported by Houston Public Media.
- $10.3 million was spent across hundreds of small cases.
Of those small cases, a majority of the money, 84 percent, went toward settlements; 11 percent was for claims that had not yet resulted in lawsuits, and the rest was for court judgments.
Many of the claims were over car crashes involving city-owned vehicles; others involved damage to private property. Among the hundreds of cases:
- A resident claimed a city garbage truck hit his mailbox and caused damage. He ended up receiving $1,685.
- Another resident claimed a city crew was cutting grass when a rock or some other foreign object was ejected from the mower and caused damage to his property. He received about $791.
- Another case alleged city workers repairing water main pipes struck the back of the resident’s parked vehicle with a tractor, causing damage. The owner received $5,185.
- $1,800 was sent to a claimant who said city workers caused damage to his gas meter while cutting the grass.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
