Peer into the files of trying times:
* A city medical examiner is accused of fondling a woman's corpse.
* An elderly recluse claims police inflicted emotional distress on her 19 cats when they broke down her front door looking for a suspected gas leak.
* A subcontractor dumps incinerator ash on a beach in Haiti and the prime contractor maintains that Philadelphia still should pay the disposal fee.
Every workday, Assistant City Solicitor Craig E.F. Alston and a small army of lawyers in the city's Law Department battle what he calls "forces from the dark side." They display their legal acumen in arbitration hearings, settlement negotiations and jury trials.
Their job, Alston says, is to keep the City of Philadelphia from losing money, chiefly through civil suits.
"We are trying to keep the money in," Alston said, adding that in a place as litigious as Philadelphia, city government is one of the biggest targets in town. "We're very conscious about trying to make sure that we stop the bleeding."
Despite that effort, the city has spent $56 million to settle suits this fiscal year. Many of them were so frivolous that it was cheaper to make a small payment - under $20,000 - than to spend time investigating the cases.
Roughly 1,600 civil suits are filed against the city each year. They include motorists involved in accidents with sanitation trucks or police cars, citizens injured on city property, city workers aggrieved because they haven't been promoted, and residents who believe the city damaged their property.
As the Home Rule Charter states, the department represents the mayor, City Council and other city departments on all legal matters. The city solicitor is the only cabinet appointment that Council must approve.
The duties of the 123 lawyers in the department extend beyond civil suits.
They must also deal with child custody and parental rights, contract purchases and real estate deals, tax deadbeats, air and water pollution, waste disposal, even immigration law, among a dizzying array of issues.
Organized into more than two dozen units and divisions, the lawyers tackle the mundane, such as the fine print of long-term lease agreements, as well as the sensational, such as recent sexual harassment suits against former Prisons Commissioner J. Patrick Gallagher. Gallagher resigned in March.
In April, the city agreed to settle the suits for $950,000.
In some instances, the department farms out work to private law firms, particularly when a case requires special expertise.
