Supervisors Urged to Back Liability Ceiling : Litigation: Consultant recommends push for state cap of $250,000 on awards in suits against local government.

A report made public Tuesday recommends that Los Angeles County officials take advantage of a changed climate in Sacramento and push for changes in state laws in order to reduce the amount local governments pay out as a result of lawsuits.

The recommendations, if adopted by the county Board of Supervisors and approved by the state Legislature, would further shield governments from liability in court actions and put a $250,000 cap on the amount a plaintiff could collect from a successful suit, said former California Supreme Court Justice John A. Arguelles, the report’s author.

The recommendations also would reignite a longstanding battle on the issue between competing special interest groups--lawyers representing plaintiffs and lawyers who work for the health-care and insurance industries.

It is a political battle that became so fierce in the 1980s that a truce was called and lawmakers enacted a moratorium on such reform attempts. The moratorium ends Dec. 31.

Steven R. Pingle of the Los Angeles County Trial Lawyers Assn. attacked several of the report’s 14 recommendations as “outrageous, unnecessary” and “discriminatory toward people who are most seriously injured by (government) negligence and misconduct.”

He accused Arguelles of mounting “a real sneak attack” on trial lawyers by failing to include them in the compiling of the report.

Citing figures he said were provided to him by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Arguelles said that between 1988 and 1991, the county paid more than $66 million in litigation costs in lawsuits related to health services, foster care and the condition of county-owned property.

In 1991, Arguelles said, the Department of Children’s Services paid $20.4 million in litigation costs involving abused children--1,000 times the total paid over the previous three years, according to the Antonovich figures.

Arguelles likened Los Angeles County government to “a great big healthy physical specimen that is bleeding to death with a thousand small . . . razor nicks” from lawsuits.

The Board of Supervisors hired Arguelles last February as a consultant to compile the report. He said his recommendations would require changes in several state codes and statutes and would apply to state government as well as county governments and municipalities.

Arguelles said he has already begun to try to build coalitions with officials in other cities and counties. He believes his proposed legislative package has a chance of being approved in the next legislative session.

“The moratorium will be over and there will be a Legislature that for the first time realizes it has term limits,” he said. “The new faces realize that government can’t be all things to all people.”

The Board of Supervisors turned the report over to department heads for review and scheduled the next discussion on it for January, when it could be approved or rejected. Pingle was told he could renew his objections at that time.