In the annals of bizarre legal outcomes, the case scheduled to come before the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee on Friday is about as wild as it gets.
A lawsuit, filed against the city following the 2017 death of a 47-year-old woman whose car was rammed while stopped at a South Side intersection by a driver speeding to evade chasing Chicago police officers, went to trial, culminating in a $10.2 million jury verdict against the city in May 2023.
Lawyers for the city appealed and won the right to a new trial based on errors in the initial proceeding. So here we go again, right? A new jury will consider this claim in a trial that this time won’t be unfair to the city.
Wrong.
After the Appellate Court upheld the order granting a new trial, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Law Department has decided to settle the case for $27 million. You read that right. City lawyers have opted to give the plaintiffs $17 million more than a jury granted them in a trial the courts determined was unfair to the city.
Absent a major behind-the-scenes legal setback that has yet to be explained publicly by the Johnson administration, the Finance Committee ought to reject this proposed settlement and force city lawyers back to the negotiating table — or perhaps back to the courtroom.
We hear a lot from City Hall about the soaring cost of legal judgments and settlements, particularly those involving alleged wrongdoing by police, and the resulting budget pressures that demand more from beleaguered Chicago taxpayers. But a growing number of aldermen are pushing back on what they consider to be an inordinate number of extraordinarily costly settlements, particularly involving injuries and deaths stemming from drivers fleeing police rather than the police vehicles themselves.
In cases like these, from the point of view of a plaintiff, it makes little financial sense to sue the party directly responsible. Those engaging in high-speed chases with the cops don’t tend to have the deepest of pockets. But, collectively at least, Chicago taxpayers certainly do.
The Finance Committee last month rejected a proposed $8.25 million settlement in a similar case, with several aldermen expressing frustration that city lawyers keep settling these complaints for millions in damages.
As to the proposed settlement before the panel on Friday, John Hendricks, the Law Department’s managing deputy of litigation, said new information indeed did surface during discovery following the city’s successful appeals that justifies the higher total. The $27 million is “in the best interest” of taxpayers in light of that fact, the Chicago Sun-Times reported him as saying.
Still, even after attending a private briefing from city lawyers on the situation, Ald. Nick Sposato, 38th, told the newspaper he couldn’t figure out how a $10 million jury verdict turned into a $27 million settlement.
The legal standard that must be met to find the city liable in these sorts of police-chase scenarios is that the cops must have been “willful and wanton” in failing to follow procedures or in acting in such a way as to show complete indifference to the safety of others. The Chicago Police Department in 2022 instituted new procedures to discourage police car chases, a policy change that presumably will reduce the number of these terrible accidents going forward but which can complicate the city’s ability to defend itself in court.
Stacy Vaughn-Harrell, the woman who died in the 2017 crash, wasn’t the only victim. Her then-21-year-old daughter, Kimberlyn Myers, a passenger, sustained major injuries. She, too, is a plaintiff along with Vaughn-Harrell’s estate.
This family suffered a life-altering tragedy, and it’s an understandable human impulse to want to provide some measure of recompense.
But it is the job of city lawyers and aldermen, who are the only ones taxpayers have to protect their interests, to determine what’s fair in a case like this and what is exorbitant. Damages that jumped to $27 million from $10 million in the course of less than three years beg for extraordinarily careful review.
Whatever the outcome in this matter, the settlement sums we’ve been seeing in cases where law enforcement hasn’t even directly caused the alleged harm make us wonder whether the current administration simply is too gun-shy about fighting some of these claims in court.
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