Listed in Administration
Santa Claus may not exist, but personal legal liability for negligence in your duties as a civil servant certainly does. That may sound like a dramatic way to begin an article, but if you have spent any time working in local government, you have probably heard some version of the same comforting myth repeated countless times.
"Don't worry. The town will protect you."
"You can't be sued personally."
"That's what the insurance is for."
Maybe. Maybe not. The uncomfortable truth is that the answer depends on where you work, what happened, what state laws apply, how your municipality is structured, whether your actions were within the scope of your employment, and a long list of other legal questions that most municipal employees never think about until it is far too late.
Many public employees assume they enjoy the same legal protections afforded to police officers, judges, prosecutors, or other government officials. Even those protections, such as qualified immunity in some situations, are far from absolute. More importantly, most municipal employees do not occupy positions that enjoy those same legal defenses in the first place.
The person issuing permits at town hall, the highway superintendent, the code enforcement officer, the clerk, the mechanic, the engineer, and especially the traffic signal technician; any one of them can find themselves named personally in a lawsuit depending on the circumstances. I know because it happened to me.
The Day Everything Changed
Several years ago, a horrific motorcycle-versus-automobile collision occurred at a malfunctioning traffic signal. Someone turned left in front an oncoming motorcycle. The motorcyclist received devastating injuries. She lost a leg and suffered permanent internal injuries. It's not my place to list the many ways in which the young woman suffered, so I won't.
The accident itself was tragic, and then came the lawsuits. The motorist was sued, rather obviously. But also, the county, the town (my then-employer), the highway superintendent, and our traffic signal contractor were all sued. And I was sued. Not only was I sued, but I became the primary target. I wasn't present at the time of the collision. I didn't tell some random motorist to foolishly cut across the path of a motorcycle, and the traffic signal certainly didn't indicate that they could. Not having a green arrow didn't matter to the driver, and me not causing the accident or the malfunction (which only affected motorists in other lanes) didn't matter either.
I was named in the lawsuit because my position involved me in the maintenance and administration of the traffic signal system; a series of traffic signals which the town had been just barely maintaining for years. This was a mess I inherited when I was appointed as deputy highway superintendent. And, unfortunately, I was the most knowledgeable person in the highway department because I genuinely gave a damn.
In an instant, I went from being a public employee trying to do my job to being a named defendant in a major personal injury lawsuit worth tens of millions of dollars. Nothing prepares you for receiving legal papers with your own name printed on them.
The Longest Three Years
The lawsuit dragged on for nearly three years. For nearly three years, it hovered over every decision I made. Every vacation. Every purchase. Every financial plan. Every conversation about the future (would there be a future?). People who have never lived through litigation often imagine that lawsuits move quickly. They do not. Instead, they become a constant background noise that never quite goes away.
You wake up thinking about it. You go to bed thinking about it. You wonder what tomorrow's mail will bring. You wonder whether another legal document is on its way. Most of all, you wonder whether you're going to lose everything you've spent your life building.
I experienced a period of almost no sleep. The attorneys appointed to defend me were wonderful, but they were highly experienced realists. They couldn't assure me of a positive outcome. I was prescribed medication to sleep and took a two week leave of absence from work. The morning I returned, the first words the highway superintendent (my supervisor) said to me were, “What the f*ck was that about?” That's the type of support I was getting at work.
During every Zoom call with our attorneys, the highway superintendent would stand in my office listening to the conversation. They always contacted me - not him. They knew it would be pointless to talk to him. He had no input. He knew nothing. Ignorance was his defense and it was working brilliantly. All of the burden was on me.
Meanwhile, I was spending approximately $300,000 on modernizing and repairing the many traffic signals in the town. When I was appointed deputy, six or seven of the signal controllers were many years past their end-of-life. You couldn't buy spare parts or have them repaired. Successive highway superintendents, each not wanting anything to do with being responsible for traffic signals, merely replaced light bulbs and had minor repairs done when needed. They never invested in modernizing the signals or had any preventative maintenance done. If they had taken the time to talk to the traffic signal contractor, they would have been quickly educated on all of the updates and repairs that needed to occur.
Depositions Are Not Like Television
Television has created the impression that depositions are exciting courtroom events. They're not. They're exhausting. I sat through approximately six hours of questioning with the few brief breaks being consumed by my legal counsel coaching me.
Despite multiple Zoom calls with my attorneys, nothing prepared me for that day. I walked into a conference room filled with strange faces. There were attorneys representing every party involved – some even on Zoom.
I was seated at the end of the table, the furthest chair from the door. If you're familiar with interrogation techniques, the interviewee is often positioned to feel trapped and helpless, with someone between him and the only exit. I don't know if that was their intention, but as someone who is prior Military Intelligence, it struck me immediately and I tried to not let it rattle me. 
A microphone was placed in front of me and a video camera stared me down at the other end of the table. A stenographer sat to my side, always typing away in my peripheral vision, occasionally interrupting to ask me to repeat something or to speak louder.
Everything I had done became subject to microscopic examination. Opposing counsel showed me printouts of my emails to other Town employees concerning the traffic signal in question. They showed me completely irrelevant screenshots from my LinkedIn page. They interrogated me about a variety of terms used in the traffic signal maintenance community. They asked me about invoices related to the traffic signal that were dated years before I was employed with the Town. They asked why I wasn't a teacher despite having a degree in education. They even questioned me about my ex-wife and my adult children. Simply everything.
Initially, the primary attorney questioning me was semi-genial and seemed almost human, but he steadily intensified his tone. He was trying to find inconsistencies, weaknesses, forgotten details, and anything that might strengthen his client's case. That is his job. His partner was constantly making faces of incredulity at me, as if he didn't believe anything I was saying. At one point he even questioned me about Roadwurx. Imagine that. A software business I had built became part of the discussion, and for a while I genuinely wondered whether they were looking for additional assets they might someday pursue.
Whether that fear was justified or not hardly mattered. When you're sitting across the table from experienced trial attorneys, your imagination fills in every blank. You begin worrying about things you never thought possible.
You Are Alone
Something that struck me as a harsh reality back then, and still does now, is how alone I felt. Not a single member of Town leadership ever contacted me about the lawsuit – the largest lawsuit the Town had likely ever dealt with. No one ever asked how I was handling it. Not the town supervisor or any member of the town board – and these were people who I dealt with constantly. They never mentioned it. As long as I was making things happen for them, they didn't care that I was drowning. For every other matter, I was their go-to guy. For the lawsuit, I was on an island alone. It was as if this massive lawsuit was a personal problem - not at all work-related.
Even Your Own Side Can't Promise You'll Win
I was fortunate in that I had excellent attorneys representing me. They were professional, experienced, and prepared. But here's something many people don't understand. Good attorneys do not make guarantees. In fact, they usually do the opposite. They know litigation is unpredictable. Evidence changes. Witnesses change. Judges make unexpected rulings. Juries are human, and there was a victim who was impossible to not have sympathy for. Cases that seem unwinnable are sometimes won. Cases that appear certain are sometimes lost.
Friends and coworkers kept assuring me everything would be fine. My attorneys never said that. They couldn't, and they shouldn't have. Their job was to prepare me for every possible outcome. What they didn't prepare me for was my boss screwing me.
Near the end of my last year working for the town, instead of appointing me for a full year, as he had always done, the highway superintendent informed me that he would be appointing me for six months. He was letting me go. It had nothing to do with the lawsuit or my performance. We had almost always gotten along and he had been highly dependent on my skills. It was politics. Bullshit small town politics. He was basically firing me in slow motion during an ongoing lawsuit. Brilliant.
The Insurance Company Surprise
Perhaps the biggest shock came from somewhere I never expected. At one point during the litigation, the town's insurance company had me served with a letter stating that they would not cover my losses because they didn't like my attitude.
Read that again. Not because I acted outside the scope of my employment. Not because I intentionally harmed someone. Because they supposedly didn't like my attitude. The attorneys representing the town must have reported that – after my employment with the town had ended – I wasn't as available or as easy to work with as I had been before they had ended my career. Weird, I know. Who could have guessed that I wasn't thrilled to help defend a town that abandoned me?
Fortunately, opposing counsel made an argument I will never forget. An insurance company doesn't get to decide, after the fact, which covered employee it feels like defending. Coverage isn't based on personalities. It's based on law and the terms of the policy. The attorneys who were suing me came to my rescue against the insurance company that was supposed to protect me. You cannot make this stuff up.
Thankfully, that issue was resolved. But the experience permanently changed how I think about legal protection. Never assume that everyone involved shares the same understanding of what your protections are.
The Emotional Cost
People typically focus purely on the financial consequences of litigation. The emotional consequences can be worse. You start questioning every decision you've ever made. You replay old events in your mind. You wonder whether you overlooked something. Whether you should have documented more. Whether one email written years ago will somehow be misunderstood. Whether one sentence spoken in passing will be taken out of context. It genuinely changed the way I would communicate about certain things. It was difficult to send an email without thinking, “Will this silly email be used against me court some day?”
The stress follows you home and back to work the following day. It follows you on weekends. It follows you on vacation. Eventually, you begin measuring time not by holidays or birthdays but by the next conference call with attorneys or legal deadline. That isn't healthy. But it is reality.
Documentation Is More Than Bureaucracy
One lesson became crystal clear. Documentation is not paperwork for paperwork's sake. It is evidence. Sign inspection reports, traffic signal maintenance records, work orders, emails, phone logs, photographs, and service histories. Every one of those records can become critically important years after they were created.
The work you performed may be excellent, but if you cannot demonstrate what was done, when it was done, and why it was done, someone else may eventually tell your story for you. And they may not tell it accurately. I don't mind telling you, when an attorney requests something and you have to reply, “We don't keep records,” you can feel the hand already squeezing your neck tightening its grip.
Don't Assume You're Immune
I'm not writing this article to frighten anyone away from public service. Municipal employees perform incredibly important work, often with limited budgets, aging infrastructure, and enormous public expectations.
Most people serve honorably and never experience what I did. But believing that it can never happen to you is a mistake. Take the time to understand your state's laws. Learn what legal protections your municipality actually provides. Ask questions about indemnification. Understand your insurance coverage. Know what happens if you're personally named in a lawsuit. Those conversations are much easier to have before an accident than afterward.
My Perspective Today
Looking back, I realize how naïve I was. Like many municipal employees, I assumed that if I simply did my job honestly and professionally, nothing could go wrong, but if it did, someone else would always protect me. Reality turned out to be far more complicated.
The case was eventually settled and the town's insurance company paid millions of dollars to the motorcyclist's attorneys. The town's attorneys never shared the amounts with me. They merely called to say it was done. I know that the victim was, at one point, seeking $60,000,000.
The experience permanently changed the way I think about risk management, documentation, municipal operations, and personal responsibility. If sharing my experience causes even one public employee to ask better questions, keep better records, or take liability a little more seriously, then perhaps something positive can come from one of the most stressful chapters of my life.
Santa Claus may not exist. But personal liability? That most certainly does.
(I apologize for spoiling the Santa myth.)