Problematic and expensive liability bills advanced out of their respective policy committees prior to last week’s policy committee cutoff deadline. But cities have been opposing HB 1025 and SB 5059, and there is still a chance to stop them in the fiscal committees ahead of this week’s fiscal committee cutoff. Both bills would dramatically increase cities’ liability exposure, lead to more litigation, and drive costs should they pass. Cities should contact their legislators about their opposition to these bills, as they have been scheduled for last minute action ahead of Friday’s fiscal committee cutoff deadline.

Taken together, these bills would dramatically increase city liability and make it harder for cities to afford or even obtain city liability insurance, increase settlement amounts, and incentivize trial attorneys to bring more actions against cities. Washington already is an outlier with one of the most plaintiff-friendly governmental liability regimes in the country.

Let your House members know that you oppose HB 1025 and contact your Senators about your opposition to SB 5059. Ask them to urge their colleagues not to advance these bills.

Police qualified immunity

Readers know that HB 1025 was amended on February 10 and voted out of the House Civil Rights & Judiciary Committee. We wrote about those amendments here. Some of the amendments were steps in the right direction for cities, including restricting the cause of action to a more limited (albeit still too broad) set of violations, treating state and local police departments similarly, and removing the restriction on qualified immunity in cases where the officer or their employer couldn’t have reasonably known whether or not certain conduct was lawful. That said, the amended bill would still result in a lot of new liability exposure for cities, and other adopted amendments further limited the availability of certain legal defenses for police and police departments. AWC still opposes this bill and we encourage you to reach out to your House members (especially any members on the House Appropriations Committee) to let them know about your city’s concerns and to not pass HB 1025.

HB 1025 is scheduled for a public hearing in the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, February 21 at 1:30 pm, and is scheduled for a committee vote on February 23.

Prejudgment Interest

SB 5059 establishes prejudgment interest on tort claims going all the way back to when the cause of action accrued, which in some cases could be years before a claim was even filed and a city was even aware there had been an injury. We last wrote about the bill here. It passed out of the Senate Law & Justice Committee on a party-line vote without any amendments and had a hearing in the Senate Ways & Means Committee on February 7. We appreciate all the cities that showed up and joined public entities from across the state opposing the bill. We encourage you to continue reaching out to your Senators about your city’s opposition to the bill. We also encourage you to reach out to the Senate Ways & Means Committee to urge them not to vote out SB 5059.

SB 5059 is scheduled for a committee vote in the Senate Ways & Means Committee on February 23.