City Hall Battling Two Negligence Lawsuits

[Lori Allen _]

According to the Cuyahoga County Court Docket, City Hall is currently battling two lawsuits that allege negligence on the part of City Hall.

The first involves a motor vehicle accident on Franklin where someone ran a stop sign and t-boned a car on Franklin. According to the lawsuit, City Hall was negliegent by not ensuring there was a stop sign at the intersection (missing). The at-fault driver apparently went through the intersection because there was no stop sign.

The second involves a former City Hall employee that fell into a manhole cover in the sidewalk on Nicholson and injured himself. Neptune Equipment (the water meter guys) are also named in this lawsuit. Apparently, Neptune did not ensure the open manhole cover was barricaded (sound familiar?) and the person fell into it. City Hall is named on the lawsuit, presumably since it was their contractor and they do have some control over their contractors (when they want to).

Regarding the first lawsuit, City Hall only has one man maintaining all of the traffic signs in the city. This includes speed limit signs, street name signs, parking signs, stop signs, yield signs, load limit signs, school zone signs, etc. This includes the signs on private yet city-maintained roads. There must be thousands of signs in Lakewood. In addition, this one employee must make the signs, put them up, ensure that the existing signs are in place, and remove graffiti from signs.

More on City Hall cutbacks to come later.

Also, it appears that our in-house legal counsel is too incompetent to handle two simple negligence suits. The city has hired Amily Imborgno and James Climer from Solon to represent the city on this, at the taxpayers expense. I don't really care who they hire, but why have in-house legal counsel in this case if it is going to be "farmed-out?" Perhaps The Butler should resign and we should get another full-time law director.