California’s civil courts step in when criminal justice fails

By Robert Glassman, especially for CalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Guest Comment written by

Los Angeles Comptroller Kenneth Mejia recently announced a roughly $18 million settlement resulting from a high-speed crash involving a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car. Mejia marked the settlement — on the largest payment of the obligation for the city this fiscal year — arose after an LAPD officer sped through an intersection and crashed his cruiser in another car, leaving two elderly brothers in mortal danger.

The case went to court. The city is fighting it. And then, halfway through the process, the city decided to settle. The comptroller’s post raised an important question: Why do municipalities often choose to settle these cases only after years of fighting victims in court?

The answer is inconvenient but important. In many cases involving government misconduct or negligence, the criminal justice system provides little meaningful accountability. Charges can be reduced, penalties can be minimal, and behavior that caused devastating harm can disappear from public view long before victims get answers. When this happens, the civil judicial system becomes the only place left where liability can arise.

The public often misunderstands the role of civil litigation in these situations. Lawsuits are often portrayed as opportunistic or excessive, especially when they involve large settlements paid for by public entities. But civil cases exist precisely for situations where serious harm occurs and other mechanisms fail to provide meaningful consequences.

The criminal justice system serves a primary purpose. Its role is to punish wrongdoing and it operates under the highest standard of proof in our legal system—guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This standard protects against wrongful convictions and ensures that criminal punishment is imposed only when the evidence is compelling.

But this high standard also means that many cases involving negligence, dangerous behavior or institutional failings do not result in criminal penalties that reflect the severity of the harm caused.

Civil courts exist to fill this gap. In civil cases, juries consider whether the defendant’s actions more likely than not caused the injury or death. Victims and their families can subpoena documents, take depositions and review evidence in a transparent forum that often reveals facts the public would never see otherwise.

Civil cases often expose gaps that would otherwise remain hidden—gaps in training, oversight, safety policies, or institutional decision-making. When these failures are brought to light, they can lead to reforms that make communities safer.

The Encino disaster highlighted by Mejia’s post illustrates the stakes. The city chose to take the case to court, as it often does, before eventually agreeing to settle the case at trial. But compensation alone cannot answer the deeper questions that families and communities often have in the wake of tragedies like this.

What exactly happened? What policies allowed this? And what changes will prevent this from happening again? Transparency in law enforcement and government agencies are essential to the answers to these questions.

In the criminal case related to the crash, the officer eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. There was no prison. As part of the resolution, the officer reportedly agreed to record a public service announcement about safe police driving — a step that, at least in theory, could serve as a public acknowledgment of the seriousness of the incident.

But this record has never been made public. And the agencies involved have refused to provide it. If the purpose of such a requirement is public education and accountability, keeping it hidden defeats the purpose.

The civil process cannot and should not replace the criminal justice system. But when criminal consequences are minimal or non-existent, civil courts often become the only place where the evidence is fully considered and responsibility is determined.

This is not a flaw in our system. This is one of his precautions.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.