Six months after approving the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history, officials in Los Angeles announced that the county had tentatively agreed to pay another massive sum, nearly $1 billion, to settle more than 400 additional claims against county employees.
In April, Los Angeles County approved a historic $4 billion settlement with about 11,000 plaintiffs and allegations of sexual abuse in L.A. juvenile facilities dating back decades. On Friday, the county said it had reached another major $828 million settlement, pending approval by the Board of Supervisors, the county governing body and the county claims board.
“Our settlements balance our obligation to compensate victims and treat their experiences with compassion with the need to implement strong safeguards to protect taxpayers from fraud,” Kathryn Barger, chair of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, said in a statement.
There are still 2,500 other unresolved cases not covered by either settlement, and that number is expected to increase, the province said. The settlements have added to the province’s unprecedented financial problems, which intensified after the wildfires that ravaged the region earlier this year.
County officials said in announcing the new settlement that “the credibility of each individual claim will be assessed, and claimants determined to have submitted fraudulent claims will not receive any money from the settlement.”
Authorities are investigating allegations that some people were paid to file claims. Nine plaintiffs included in the initial settlement said they were paid to file a lawsuit, and four of them said they filed fraudulent claims, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
The lawsuits filed by thousands of people alleged they were abused and sexually abused in foster homes and juvenile detention facilities in the county, with claims dating back to 1959. They were able to sue because of a California law that took effect in 2020 and suspended the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse, allowing them to file lawsuits for three years.
The county said its ability to assess the validity of allegations was hampered by a lack of data, the sheer volume of cases and court-imposed limits on legal discovery, officials said.
Under the $4 billion settlement, the amount paid to each plaintiff could range from $100,000 to $3 million. If the latest settlement is approved, individual awards will be determined based on factors including the severity of the alleged abuse.
In its statement, the county said claims brought by the law firm Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, in the April settlement will undergo additional investigation.
Some of the claimants represented by the firm told the LA Times that people they met outside a county social services office offered them money to file claims, took them to the DTLA firm and then paid them amounts ranging from $50 to $200 per person. Non-lawyers are prohibited from soliciting people to sign up for lawsuits with a firm under California law.
DTLA has denied all allegations. Claimants represented by the company may be asked to conduct additional interviews and provide more evidence of the allegations, depending on the nature of the claim and the suspected fraud, the province said.
The county can also refer attorneys accused of paying claims to the bar for possible disciplinary action, officials said.
DTLA Law Group said it filtered nearly 13,000 inquiries and accepted only a fraction of the cases.
“We do not pay our customers to file lawsuits, and we strongly oppose any such actions. If we ever learned that anyone associated with us in any capacity had done something like this, we would immediately terminate our relationship with them,” the company said. “We want justice for real victims.”
The province has put more safeguards in place to prevent abuse and act quickly if it does happen, officials said. That includes a new hotline for reporting allegations of child sexual abuse against county employees, expected to be up and running by the end of the year.
But officials said the law allowing the lawsuits has placed severe financial pressure on the county and requires cuts to “critical” programs and services, and that “common sense solutions that strike the right balance for the victims and LA County and other public entities” are needed.
“LA County and other local governments must balance their obligations to past victims with the need to avoid disastrous financial consequences that would undermine the social safety net services our youth, families and communities depend on today,” said Joe Nicchitta, the county’s acting chief executive.
The $4 billion settlement in April far surpassed the $2.6 billion settlement reached in 2022, with Boy Scouts of America at the time the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.
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