By agency
Which parts of city government cost the most to defend. Amounts are cumulative settled payouts across all fiscal years in the dataset.
By fiscal year
Annual settled payouts by the five top-paying agencies. Bars stack; the rest fall into “all other.”
Budget vs actual
The city usually budgets somewhat more for judgments and claims than it actually pays out, though not always — in fiscal year 2022 the payouts ran ahead of the budgeted line. This is the line item (JUDGEMENTS AND CLAIMS) in the Expense Budget, next to what the Comptroller reports was actually settled. Budget figures extend out to fiscal years the Comptroller hasn't yet reported on.
The biggest single settlements
Top 25 individual payouts on record. Wrongful convictions, serious injuries and major medical-malpractice cases dominate.
Browse the ledger
Filter all settled claims by fiscal year, agency, claim type, borough or minimum amount. Defaults to the most expensive first.
Methodology
Everything here comes directly from public data. No estimates, no adjustments.
Data source
All figures are drawn from NYC Open Data dataset ex6k-ym48 — Claims Report — Underlying Settlements and Claims Filed Data — published by the New York City Comptroller’s Office. The dataset is refreshed roughly annually, with each Comptroller report covering the prior fiscal year.
Scope
This page shows only claims with claim_action = SETTLED and disposition_amount > 0. It does not include claims still pending, claims dismissed without payment, or judgments entered against the city after trial. Coverage spans fiscal years —.
Normalization
The source data mixes case conventions and abbreviation styles (for example, “Police Department” and “POLICE DEPARTMENT” appear as separate agency values). The fetch script collapses these into single buckets and rolls fine-grained claim type labels into broader categories. Original values are retained in agency_raw and type_raw fields in the downloaded JSON.
What “settled” means
A settlement is the city paying to resolve a claim. It is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any party. In some cases the city settles because it is cheaper than litigating; in others, it settles because the claim is meritorious.
Refresh
Run node fetch.mjs in the project folder to pull the latest dataset. Last refreshed: —.