The Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) will conduct a study for New York City Councilman Daniel Garodnick examining the municipality’s annual legal settlement payouts, the New York Daily News reports.
According to Councilman Garodnick, New York City is on track to spend $735 million on legal settlements in 2012 alone. Legal settlements are a large budgetary burden on the city, which spends roughly six times more per capita on legal settlements than Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
In enlisting the aid of HNMCP students and Program on Negotiation faculty member Robert Bordone, Garodnick hopes that NYC can simultaneously develop a sustainable plan for tackling the burgeoning cost of legal payouts while also saving the city government money. HNMCP’s work focusing on dispute systems design and conflict management makes it uniquely qualified to address the issue of legal settlement costs.
The research will examine how various major cities and corporations handle lawsuits. The results of the study will be presented at the end of the year. Because the work is part of a course, all research conducted will be unpaid.
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