Chuck - As you know, here in Montgomery County, the County is self-insured and there are other participating local governments who are in our self-insurance program such as the school board and some smaller municipalities within the County. By statue, the County Attorney has $5000 in authority. For amounts over that, the matter must go to the Risk Manager who has a certain level of authority and then, after that, to the claims settlement committee made up of risk management people from different jurisdictions who participate in the County's self-insurance program. The final approval of any amounts the committee agrees to rests with the Finance Director. We usually try to get some authority before going to a mediation (unless there really is no exposure as we see it) and have the Risk Manager or her designee attend with us. If there is an agreement to an amount over the RM authority, then we tell the Court that we will recommend it to the claims settlement committee but would have to take it to that committee for approval. We generally have not had much push back from the Court on the way we handle these matters. Patty Patricia P. Via Chief, Division of Litigation Montgomery County Attorney's Office 240-777-6721   CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The contents of the email may be confidential under the attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or other applicable law.  If you have received this email in error, you may not copy, distribute or use its contents, and you are requested to delete the email from your system immediately and notify the sender at 240-777-6700.  Thank you. -----Original Message----- From: Federal [mailto:federal-bounces@lists.imla.org] On Behalf Of Carpenter, Tom Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:44 PM To: Chuck Thompson Cc: cityattorneys@lists.imla.org; federal@lists.imla.org; capitalcities@lists.imla.org Subject: Re: [Federal] [Capitalcities] Mediation- member question Dear Chuck, The City of Little Rock participates in an insurance pool, so we try to have someone from the pool there or on standby. The Board of Directors, not the Mayor, deals with any other amount. We have had the Mayor or City Manager present, or on standby, but we let the Court know at the beginning that final approval is subject to BOD approval. We also note that the CM or the Mayor will recommend the settlement to the BOD. The federal judges here have tended to accept that approach. Tom Carpenter Little Rock, Arkansas Sent from my iPad On Oct 29, 2013, at 2:35 PM, "Chuck Thompson" <CThompson@imla.org<mailto:CThompson@imla.org>> wrote: A member has a question and as per usual, I'll forward your responses to the member and thank you for the help: We are running into more and more often "court ordered mediation" in which the Court is demanding the city have someone at the mediation with "authority to settle the case". The mediators are reading this as "sufficient authority to settle the case" . In our charter the City Attorney has $500 of settlement authority. The remainder and unlimited authority, per our charter, explicitly and expressly resides with the Mayor, who is the sole contracting officer of the city. We have taken the position that it is a "non-delegable" duty on the part of the mayor. However, even in cases where the Mayor is authorizing a settlement amount we are facing push back from Judges, magistrates and mediators that the offer is not sufficient. Some judges are even threatening to require the mayor to attend the mediation if he is the only one with authority to settle. Please inquire how other cities are addressing similar issues. Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Executive Director and General Counsel International Municipal Lawyers Association, Inc. 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 1440 Bethesda, Maryland 20814 202-466-5424 x7110 Direct: 202-742-1016 Cell: 240-876-6790 Plan ahead: IMLA's Mid Year Seminar in Exciting Anchorage, Alaska, May 17-20, 2014 IMLA's Annual Conference in Baltimore, MD Sept. 10-14 Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the the Battle of Ft. McHenry and the birth of the "Star Spangled Banner" _______________________________________________ Capitalcities mailing list Capitalcities@lists.imla.org<mailto:Capitalcities@lists.imla.org> http://lists.imla.org/mailman/listinfo/capitalcities_lists.imla.org _______________________________________________ Federal mailing list Federal@lists.imla.org http://lists.imla.org/mailman/listinfo/federal_lists.imla.org