A look at Alameda County's highest payouts and settlements

OAKLAND, Calif. - Alameda County has paid $255 million to settle lawsuits and award plaintiffs following jury verdicts since 2000, with the highest award – $36 million – paid out a few months ago, according to an analysis of data obtained through the county counsel's office and additional KTVU reporting. 

Alameda County's $36 million payout

By the numbers:

The board of supervisors in May approved the $36 million to the family of a Dublin husband and wife killed by an Alameda County sheriff's deputy who was in love with the wife – Maria Tran.

Triple previous record

KTVU sought to determine if this was the largest sum the county had ever paid out. Turns out, it's not just the biggest settlement in the last 25 years—it's more than triple the previous record. 

"The settlement to the Tran family is indeed the largest settlement in Alameda County history," Alameda County Supervisor Board President David Haubert told KTVU. "This is a tragic, tragic incident that we are sending our condolences to the family. There's nothing that we can do or say, or any amount of money that would cover and adequately compensate this tragedy. We're glad to get it behind us. And we hope to never, ever repeat something like this again."

Haubert did note that the county's annual operating budget is about $6 or $7 billion, and this payment represents about .6% of that.

The next highest award was paid out quietly more than 20 years ago and did not involve a public courtroom battle. In fact, the sum has never been publicly reported before: $12 million stemming from a 2004 breach of contract claim from the construction firm, MA Mortenson Co. Board records show the settlement was approved in August 2005. 

The third-highest amount was $11 million paid to the Loggervale family – a Black mother and two daughters who a jury found were unlawfully searched and detained by Alameda County sheriff's deputies outside a Castro Valley Starbucks in 2019. The original jury award was for $8.25 million, but records show that the county paid out an additional $2.5 million. 

Determining the payouts

To determine the payouts and settlements, KTVU filed a Public Records Request in May with Alameda County requesting settlements and jury awards paid out by the county from 2000 to the present. 

The county provided KTVU with five spreadsheets in mid-June, which did not include the $36 million over the Tran deaths, as the check was issued on June 4, after the request had been made. 

The five spreadsheets were separated into categories including medical malpractice claims, tax settlement claims, from the "legacy payroll system," and two separate settlement spreadsheets. 

In all, there were 3,582 records and roughly 2,500 people who were paid during that time period.

KTVU merged all the data and sorted it from highest to lowest dollar amount, consolidating the "payees" who received multiple payments. 

At least half of the top payouts stemmed from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

"Indeed, we've seen a large number of extraordinarily large payments go out to victims of abuse in our jails and incidents with law enforcement," Haubert said. "I know that law enforcement is a very tough job. We can only get better by additional training, by additional resources, by not repeating the past. I know that mistakes will continue to happen. The best that we can do is to manage them and to offset them to the best of our abilities. I always say hire smart, train people, and retain the people that you have."

Despite this, Haubert said he strongly opposes strict, independent oversight of the sheriff's office, and instead supports oversight by civilians in an advisory-only capacity. 

Cases: highest to lowest

Dig deeper:

Here is a look at these cases in order from highest to lowest payouts from 2000 to the present, though the awards to the Tran family and the family of Christian Madrigal – a young man who died at Santa Rita Jail – are not listed on the documents provided by the county, but were later confirmed as paid by the county counsel's office. 

KTVU included the payouts to the Trans and the Madrigal family in determining the rankings for this report. 

In the county records, sometimes the "payee" is the attorney for the case, and sometimes it is the plaintiff. Typically, attorneys in personal injury cases take 30% to 40% of the final settlement, and the plaintiff gets the rest, according to several law firm websites. But there is no rule on this and individual attorney fees can vary by specific agreement. 

Here is the order of the highest payouts since 2020: 

• In 2023, Alameda County paid $7 million to Nia' Amore Monk, whose father, Maurice Monk, lay in his Santa Rita Jail cell for days before anyone noticed he was dying. Exclusive body camera video obtained through the law firm, Lawyers for the People, and given to KTVU shows no one physically checked on Monk, for at least three days, possibly four. And when deputies finally found the 45-year-old's body, stacks of uneaten food trays and pills lay scattered about the floor near an oblong puddle of urine by the foot of his bed.  Although 11 deputies and medical staff were originally charged with his death, as of last week, all but one of the charges against just one deputy have been dismissed.
• The San Francisco firm, Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfield, has so far been paid $6.7 million, according to the county. Lawyers from this firm sued Alameda County in federal court in 2018 over the mental health treatment and the cruel and unusual punishment of those incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail. In 2022, the firm was also able to secure a six-year "consent decree" over Santa Rita Jail.
• Over the years, the county's spreadsheets state that Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris has been paid at least $5.9 million stemming from a total of 39 cases that range from police brutality, wrongful search and deputy misconduct. However, this amount is likely much higher than that, because he also represented Christian Madrigal's family, who was awarded $5 million – which wasn't listed on the county's spreadsheets, though later confirmed with KTVU, and Barbara Doss, the mother of Dujan Armstrong, who died in custody at Santa Rita Jail and was awarded $2.7 million. If these last two cases were added to Burris's cases, the total would be roughly $13 million, ranking his combined cases as the highest of all the payouts.
• The county paid parents Jose Jaime and Gabriela Covarrubias $5 million in 2020. Their 20-year-old son, Christian Madrigal, was suffering a mental health breakdown, and they called 911 for help. Fremont police said Madrigal was resisting their commands and they brought him to Santa Rita Jail in a WRAP. Deputies decided to chain Madrigal to a cell door instead and left him there for several hours. He ended up hanging himself on the chains he was provided and dying at the hospital in June 2019. The lieutenant at the jail was ousted but not criminally charged. This payout was not included in Alameda County's public records request returned to KTVU,.
• In 2017, Stanislav Petrov received $5.5 million after video caught Alameda County sheriff’s deputies beating him in a San Francisco alley two years prior with steel batons. He survived the beating despite receiving 40 blows, and the two deputies were fired. Petrov's payout was broken out into three payouts, and the payee's name is his attorneys, Haddad and Sherwin, and two other payments to insurance companies.
• In 2016, Alameda County paid $4.6 million to the widow of Dat Thanh Luong, who a judge ruled was mentally incompetent and should be transferred to a state institution. He spent 81 more days at Santa Rita Jail and was strangled by his cellmate.

There are high payouts to other non-sheriff entities on the list the county provided, which includes $8.7 million to the Union Pacific Railroad Company spanning three cases and $7.1 million to the state of California stemming from 99 cases. 

What the sheriff has to say

Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez said she recognized that the amount of money the county has paid out in settlements is a "legitimate concern for the community."

In an email, she added that law enforcement agencies generally face greater litigation exposure than many other public agencies because of the "nature of their responsibilities, including making arrests, responding to critical incidents, using force when legally justified, and operating one of California's largest county jail systems."

Sanchez also acknowledged the Sheriff's Office's history of wrongful death and excessive force settlements and "has made accountability and organizational reform a priority."

As a result of some of these lawsuits, and a court-ordered consent decree, Sanchez noted that the Sheriff's Office has strengthened training, policies, supervision, and internal review processes, and has experienced substantial reductions in in-custody deaths and use-of-force incidents.

Sanchez did not answer directly whether she believes more oversight would reduce the payouts, though in the past, she has said she welcomes advisory oversight – similar to Haubert – but not independent oversight, like the Oakland Police Commission has over the Oakland Police Department.

 In an interview with KTVU in 2023, she said she is willing to work with an oversight body, but she noted that public oversight over an elected sheriff is different from a police chief, in that the law, AB 1185, does not allow civilians the ability to discipline sheriff's employees.

Moving forward, Sanchez said she is committed to implementing evidence-based reforms and strengthening accountability across the organization.

Sanchez said she remains "committed to transparency, continuous improvement, and providing professional, equitable service to the residents of Alameda County while working to reduce incidents that may lead to litigation."