What a difference a few hours of sleep and a few phone calls from the mayor’s office makes.
One day after shooting it down by a vote of 13 to 8, the City Council’s Finance Committee on Wednesday approved a $3.7 million settlement stemming from a drunk driving accident in River West in that left a young woman paralyzed from the waist down. The vote was 22 to 3. The full Council was expected to sign off later Wednesday.
What changed the outcome in only the second Finance Committee meeting chaired by Ald. Scott Waguespack?
“I suppose there were phone calls late at night or early this morning,” Waguespack (32nd) said of the pressure applied by the mayor’s office.
“People just had better knowledge of the … case and a better understanding of what the implications were.”
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) added: “After the smoke cleared from yesterday’s committee meeting, people had some time to reflect on how much exposure the city was facing: $26 million.”
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) joined Aldermen Marty Quinn (13th) and Silvana Tabares (23rd) in voting “no.”
“My understanding is that a lot of phone calls and pressure was made on aldermen by the fifth floor to change their vote or not show up,” Lopez said.
“I guess people decided that they wanted to be part of the go-along gang and sided with the administration. It’s unfortunate because, yet again, the taxpayers are gonna be on the hook for peoples’ bad behavior. It definitely sends the wrong message.”
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All but $200,000 of the $3.7 million settlement will go to 30-year-old Kelsey Ibach, who was one of four passengers in the car that Phillip Cho drove off a roadway and over a 25-foot embankment at the intersection of Erie Street and Union Ave. on Sept. 13, 2014.
On Monday, aldermen unleashed their frustration that beleaguered Chicago taxpayers were left holding the bag for $3.7 million while the drunken motorist who fled the scene paid roughly $100,000 and the owner of the nightclub that allegedly over-served Cho was on the hook for only $1 million.
Retiring First Deputy Corporation Counsel Katie Hill has argued that the city’s liability — aside from its deep pockets — stems from the plaintiffs’ claim that the intersection was “improperly designed and maintained to the point where it created an optical illusion” that led Cho to “believe he was entering an expressway ramp.”
The plaintiffs further alleged that the city had “insufficient concrete barriers to prevent his car from leaving the roadway.”
The argument was bolstered by the fact that, when a bridge was removed from that location during the early 1970’s, a “concrete barrier was established across much of that embankment area, but the last bit was a metal guardrail, which was not crash-engineered,” Hill said.
“The city had been in discussions to change the barriers at that intersection since 2007. This accident occurred in 2014. It has since been repaired and there now is a crash-engineered barrier continuously across the entire area,” Hill said.
Reilly argued Wednesday that his colleagues did the right thing by approving a $3.7 million settlement instead of rolling the dice with a trial that would have featured Ibach, whom a jury would have found to be a “very sympathetic figure.”
“She wasn’t driving this vehicle. She was a victim. Once that was processed, people understood that this is a good defensive move for taxpayers because, if this had gone to jury, it’s a good likelihood this probably would have cost us a whole lot more money,” Reilly said.
What Reilly hopes will come from the temporary embarrassment is a commitment from the Lightfoot administration to take a tougher stance against “these late-hours bars that are over-serving patrons, turning them loose on our streets, then exposing taxpayers to liability.”
Reilly noted that the “occupants of that vehicle were incredibly over-served, allegedly” and that the driver fled the scene for days before finally turning himself in to authorities.
