$130,000 Paid out in Claims This Year

The City of Yakima and its insurers have paid out $130,000 in ten claims just in the first three months of this year with another 27 claims closed without having to pay, as reported by The Yakima Herald.The Herald reports two of the claims account for almost all of the financial settlements with an injury claim where an elderly woman fell while boarding a Dial-a-Ride vehicle totaling a $100,000 payment in January and another claim of a sewer backup for $18,000 in damages.

“These payments are just to settle the claims. No one has to admit liability,” said the senior assistant city attorney who handles claims against Yakima, Helen Harvey, via The Herald.

The city addresses any issues they see and tries to exercise good management to prevent any claims in the future so when a claim is filed against the city, its legal department, an insurance adjuster and any department named in the claim review it to see if any city operations need to be changed, reports The Herald.

The Herald writes that the attentiveness to each claim is paying off with numbers falling from 192 claims filed in 1997 and 25,000 less residents compared to just 101 claims last year.