WASHINGTON — A series of tort reforms could have saved New York City more than $100 million a year, but never received state legislative approval, according to the city's former mayor.

“Our legal system needs checks and balances” to assure fairness, Rudolph Giuliani told a luncheon at the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform's 13th annual Legal Reform Summit in Washington last week.

But Mr. Giuliani, who now serves as chairman and CEO of New York-based consultant Giuliani Partners L.L.C., called New York's tort system completely “unfair.”

“I worked tirelessly for tort reform” while mayor of New York, said Mr. Giuliani, who held the job from 1994 through 2001.

He said that New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. is the second-largest hospital system in the country, for which it self-insures liability. Mr. Giuliani said that during his tenure as mayor, the tort bill for the hospital system ran about $300 million, or half of the city's total annual tort costs of approximately $600 million.

But he said half of the hospital system's tort costs stemmed from “phony claims.” That resulted in an “incredible” of amount of what Mr. Giuliani called “wasted money” that could have been used to improve schools or other public services.

The tort problems were far from confined to the hospital system, he said.

As an example, Mr. Giuliani told the story of a man running down the street who tripped because of a pothole. The man was paralyzed. A jury awarded the man $70 million — later reduced to $4 million — from the city, Mr. Giuliani said.

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The catch was the man was fleeing from a subway station where he had just assaulted a man and stolen his wallet. The paralyzed man was sentenced to prison. He was, however, allowed to keep the $4 million award, said Mr. Giuliani, who added that the man was now the richest inmate in Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Mr. Giuliani said that as mayor of New York, he sought to have comprehensive tort reform, including limits on pain and suffering and punitive damages, approved by the state legislature.

“That would have probably saved us $150 million a year,” he said.

But the legislature refused to pass tort reforms, he said.

As a result, New York City has had problems retaining physicians who earn their medical degrees at New York universities. Concerns about medical malpractice liability lead those physicians to practice elsewhere, such as Texas, where medical malpractice reforms have been in place for years, he said.

The lack of tort reform thus presents a “brain drain” problem for New York, Mr. Giuliani said.