Travis County Commissioners Court
November 8, 2005
Item 8
8. Consider and take appropriate action on recommendation to settle liability claim of james scott.
>> donna sternman for the risk management office. The claim before you is for the property damage settlement for james scott. Also just handed you on Friday he gave me his documentation for his bodily injury. I would also like to include that in our recommendation for your approval, so we can completely settle the claim. He's willing to -- in addition to the -- to the property damage settlement, we are requesting a $13,197.09 will cover the damage to his vehicle. Damage to a laptop, his 33 days loss of use. He's agreed to semtioning his bodily injury claims for a thousand dollars with his out of pocket as you can see on paper I just gave you was 743.85. Do you want me to go over the collision with you?
>> see if there are any questions.
>> this was extraordinary, like hello. Like we have to take a moment on this one because this was one where it was not within the course and scope, on their way to an off duty job, all of the reports say this was a u-turn done on a major highway on a blind hill. Right now we are at $14,000, we have a Travis County vehicle that is going to be coming soon. I think we can pretty much count on that one being about a $20,000 gig. This was a claim that is the equivalent of a -- of a sheriff's department in terms of dallas and I would like to request that the Travis County sheriff's office be asked to reimburse this claim to the risk management department. There is no way people are going to get series about these things until they have to pay financial attention to this. This $14,000 we sent a letter to the sheriff saying kindly reimburse this account so that we can get this settled. We will settle our end, you settle up with us.
>> because he works for an elected official, we can't ask for a corrective action to be taken.
>> they have their internal process.
>> I think that corrective action ought to be taken.
>> they will, yes, ma'am. Still very early in the claim, I’m sure it's going up the chain to the major's office. Possibly even further.
>> what do we do normally, well not normally, I guess nothing is actually normal about things sometimes. We do have a process that we deal with for -- for non-elected positions, those departments that are directly responsible --
>> we have a safety policy.
>> there is a policy that we have in place. I don't really recall off the --
>> it's a point system that are assigned to [multiple voices] assigned to employees. When they get to a certain level, they are not allowed to driveway a county vehicle. I don't think any policy has been -- [multiple voices] something that may need to be looked at in the future. It's -- for elected officials to maybe set aside some type of policy for these type of situations. But again. We are -- we aren't at that point at this time.
>> well, in all departments, I will say the -- to the best of my recollection, almost every department, if not all departments that do not abide by the vehicle safety policy, have a -- have a policy in their own place. All departments that are -- that report to the Commissioners court, of course, do -- do -- you are applicable to the vehicle safety policy and any of the other ones are the elected officials. We actually do have a few of those that participate [multiple voices] and you can rest assured that there will be corrective action to this employee internally. I mean I only say when the county damage claim comes, this is way too soon, hasn't gone through the chain of command. The recommendations are on their way up of starting at the sergeant's level through the lieutenant to the captain to the major, it will be doled out at that point the severity of it, of how much -- this is definitely at fault. There's no getting around that. And -- -- [speaker interrupted -- multiple voices] but at this particular moment, I’m not comfortable reporting what corrective action was taken until it's reached the end of the chain of command.
>> but I guess my question, though, was not the corrective action, per se, but a policy in place to lead to the corrective action.
>> the sheriff's department does have a policy, yes.
>> they do have a policy?
>> yes.
>> okay. I would like to withdraw that other question. I did not know that there was an internal policy for this department. But if there is one in place leading to corrective action, there -- that's a different way of looking at it. If that's what it is, that's what it is. Thank you. I would like us to at least ask. I am interested in getting this settled for the extra amount that has been told to us and that we send a nice letter to the sheriff's office to -- to -- attention to the sheriff hamilton because of the nature of this particular accident that we would ask the department to reimburse and to give them the numbers to -- to send the money over so we can take care of this matter. The second piece of this, related to the tcso vehicle, that the same kind of request will be coming in their direction.
>> three or four questions that I would like to ask legal in executive session. Do we have any more questions of -- what's your name, ma'am?
>> donna sternman.
>> while she's here.
>> donna, the thing we got today from the city of Austin, can you make sure whatever gets to melissa at whatever point that we redact the social security that is on our pieces. We do not want that to go into --
>> sure.
>> thank you. Can we ask you to touch base with the sheriff's office between now and 1:30 this afternoon to find out what corrective action, if any, they have taken in this case.
>> at this level.
>> many of us know that -- ms. Thomas is one who is the assistant county attorney that worked with you on this.
>> yes, she does.
>> we will have three or four legal questions, at least I will. I can give you those in advance if it will help.
>> the off duty issue or --
>> yeah, yeah.
>> because okay --
>> it would help me to be reminded. Of exactly what the legal standards are. Any other questions?
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 6:21 PM