What is the long-term cost of substituting legal truth-finding with risk management?
While settlements can serve an important role, the growing reliance on them, particularly in cases involving alleged police misconduct, raises serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and the long-term health of our communities and justice system.
Traditionally, litigation is more than a mechanism for resolving disputes. Depositions, sworn testimony, evidentiary hearings, and judicial rulings are procedural formalities that create a public record. They establish precedent. They force hard questions to be asked and answered. Critically, they determine what falls within the parameters of the law and drive reforms.
Justice is about both process and outcome. It is about facts established in the open, accountability grounded in evidence, and reforms driven by understanding rather than assumption.
“When cases are resolved primarily through risk management, where city leaders weigh optics and financial exposure over the legal determination of truth, the process shifts. The focus becomes avoiding uncertainty rather than uncovering facts,” said Joe Tamburino, Tamburino Law Group. “This prevents transparency, accountability and pushes the burden onto taxpayers and communities.”
A recent $30 million settlement in San Diego involving a police officer’s use of force in the death of a 16-year-old Konoa Wilson is now the largest settlement of its kind, surpassing the $27 million settlement reached in 2021 following George Floyd’s death. This is not an isolated case, it is part of a national trend of ever-increasing settlements in cases of alleged police misconduct.
If settlements continue to escalate into the hundreds of millions of dollars, some municipalities may face insolvency. Consider Memphis, where plaintiffs in the case involving the death of Tyre Nichols are reportedly demanding $550 million, roughly half of the city’s annual budget. A payout of that magnitude could push the city into bankruptcy.
A settlement check may close a case, stop the headlines for a moment, but it does not explain what happened, why it happened, or how to prevent it from happening again. The absence of formal findings limits the justice system’s ability to learn, adapt, and improve.
If we want safer communities, stronger institutions, and public trust in the justice system, we must be willing to engage in the harder work of legal truth-finding, even when it is uncomfortable, time consuming, or politically risky. Otherwise, we risk learning nothing, changing nothing, and communities are left with more than just mounting costs.
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