SEATTLE — Giovonn Joseph-McDade, Tommy Le and Brent Heath likely never met each other in life.
But in death, they represent a growing trend among those who died at the hands of police under questionable circumstances in Washington state.
Lawsuits filed over their violent deaths resulted in more than a dozen multimillion-dollar settlements in 2021 as cities and counties increasingly decide to forgo civil trials and offer grieving families a kind of financial accountability. While settling police misconduct cases before they reach a courtroom is hardly a new tactic for risk managers, the steadily rising numbers and amounts are.
