By Bob Dorigo Jones

Full story in Crain’s Detroit Business

I have spent nearly three decades increasing awareness of the high cost of lawsuit abuse and America’s deeply flawed personal injury system. It’s plagued by exploitative practices and bad actors who take advantage of victims while inflating costs for families, consumers, and businesses. Aggressive marketing, referral schemes, and profit-driven motives have warped the system, often leaving injured individuals in greater pain and deeper debt than when they first sought legal help.

The time and costs involved with litigation have fostered a culture where settlements – and payouts – have become the default option, even when defendants are likely to prevail at trial. These defects are magnified at scale when public entities are sued and taxpayers end up bearing the ramifications of settlement costs.

Between 2017 and 2022, the City of Detroit paid out a staggering $88.9 million to settle 1,528 lawsuits. That’s nearly $90 million of taxpayer money — money that could have been invested in schools, infrastructure, or public safety—redirected instead to resolve legal claims, many of which stem from misconduct, negligence, or systemic dysfunction.

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The questions are: how much longer can the city and its residents afford this, financially, morally, and politically? And who benefited from all these lawsuits? Certainly not the city, and usually not the consumer or resident.

Detroit’s leadership must face this issue with urgency and transparency. It can be argued that they are victims of this runaway system, too. Legal settlements are sometimes necessary, but they shouldn’t be business as usual. When payouts like these become routine, it signals a deeper rot in the system.

After attorney fees and inflated medical bills, many victims only receive a fraction of the payout they were promised. One study showed that there were “lower average net settlement payments among claimants who hired attorneys versus those who did not.” Victims can end this process with new injuries from unnecessary medical procedures. They often are left with varying levels of debt, alongside ongoing financial and medical burdens.

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Transparency in reporting, reform in problem departments, and community engagement are essential first steps. Citizens deserve to know how their money is being spent, and what’s being done to ensure this pattern doesn’t continue.
Accountability should never come because of litigation alone. It should be baked into the culture of city government. If Detroit wants to reclaim its future, it must first confront the root symptoms of these costs and not compound its past mistakes.

Until then, residents will keep asking the same question: how much more can this city afford to lose?