Lawsuit-Proofing Your City with Scott Grossberg

Yes, you read the title correctly. After 16 episodes, I'm putting Lawsuit-Proofing Your City on hiatus for a short while. You can visit scottgrossberglaw.com if you'd like to consider some live events.

Obviously, we prize the safety and security of our children, elders, and dependent adults. Indeed, there are overiding public policies addressing the safety and well-being of children, elders and dependent adults. While we don't want to turn everyone into investigators, we do want those who we deem to be mandated reporters to be our eyes and ears. This means that mandated reporters, if they have reasonable suspicion, become the voice for children, elders, and dependent adults who might be being abused or neglected.

Being sued is bad enough. When an elected official, however, chooses to use pending or resolved litigation as a political tool . . . or worse, use it to target an employee or weaponize it for a private agenda, there can be serious consequences. There’s are simple solutions to all this . . . and I’m going to share those with you.

Welcome to the confusing world of additional insured status. This podcast episode is designed to give you some potential ammunition for handling insurance situations that might otherwise prove unmanageable. Join us as we explorea dditional insured status, the duty to defend and the duty to indemnify.

In a world that loves to point blame at public agencies, it’s no wonder that, anytime someone is hurt on public property, they accuse the agency of maintaining a dangerous condition. However, not every incident actually involves a dangerous condition. In this episode we’re going to explore what is and isn’t an actual dangerous condition of public property. That way you’ll know what standards to apply and when we might be able to apply a Design Immunity defense. You’ll get an idea of what you might want to protect your agency against.

There is very little training that prepares a public employee to start, conduct, and finish an investigation. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about knowing when an investigation is necessary, knowing what to investigate, and even reporting writing suggestions.

The California Public Records Act gives people the right to inspect and obtain copies of government records that are non-privileged and non-exempt. Transparency in government is an important concept. But, public agencies have to be careful that they are being consistent in their responses and mindful of the privacy rights of third parties.

Our laws are being taken advantage of and twisted by some aggressive lawyers in order to gain the uppper hand for individual employees and labor unions. Laws that were originally designed to equalize the bargaining power of employees are being weaponized against public agencies. You are now seeing votes of no confidence, claims, and lawsuits filed more requently and the results can be devastating.

Predatory lawyers are now using trial supboenas to attempt to have you appear in court with documents. This wouldn't normally be an issue except these questionable attorneys are now using legal process to bring you into a trial in which your agency is not even remotely involved. Learn how to combat this disturbing trend.

In the past, documents were stored in filed and boxes. Now, the digitizing of data is commonplace. That means you must have a consistent and understable data deletion policy that meets legal standards and still provides you with a way to manage the ever-increasing volume of information you generate and collect. In today's episode, we'll talk about automatic data deletion polciies and what those mean for your agency.

You need to have a solid record handling workflow so that you can meet discovery obligations. That means avoiding the improper destruction of evidence that is relevant to a pending or reasonably foreseeable claim, lawsuit or other legal proceeding. We'll talk about those things in today's episode.

Nothing explains a situation like a photograph or video. But, your visual images have to be thought about, created, and retained with a specific workflow in mind. Here are some thoughts on how to use visual storytelling to help defend a claim or case.

Don't fall victim to a shotgun approach to litigation - the situation where your agency is named in a claim or lawsuit and you know your folks didn't do anything wrong. Learn the best way to immediately respond to such a claim or complaint.

You have folks under the age of 18 participating in agency programs and events. But do you have proper releases and waivers in place? Let's find out!

When you let the fear of litigation run your agency-wide decisions, you are doomed to faliure. Let's discuss ways to remedy that.