A state appeals panel has affirmed a jury’s decision to award $33.5 million to the families of men injured and killed as a result of a police chase involving Dolton village police officers.
Aja Seats sued the village in 2016 as a special administrator for the late John Kyles, as did Sabrina Wright as guardian of Duane Dunlap, who is disabled. Kyles and Dunlap were passengers in a vehicle driven by Demetrius Sorrells on Oct. 9, 2016, when it crashed into a building after a mile of being pursued by two Dolton officers.
Although the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the complaint in 2019, they refiled in November of that year, in part alleging the village failed to preserve or produce dashboard camera footage, along with negligent training and supervision.
In a brief trial that started in late July 2022, under the supervision of Cook County Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Budzinski, the jury found the village was not willful and wanton in its conduct, but awarded $33.5 million in damages for spoilation of evidence. Budzinski denied the village’s posttrial motions, which it challenged before the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
Justice Rena Van Tine wrote the panel’s opinion, filed June 20; Justices Jesse Reyes and Bertina Lampkin concurred. The order was issued under Supreme Court Rule 23, which restricts its use as precedent.
On appeal, Dolton argued Budzinski should have “bifurcated,” or separated, the claims; said the plaintiffs failed to establish three of four elements of a spoilation claim; challenged jury instructions; impugned the closing arguments of the plaintiffs’ lawyers from the firm of Loevy & Loevy, of Chicago; and said it should have been allowed to advance a special interrogatory.
Regarding bifurcation, Van Tine wrote, Dolton wasn’t pursuing separate trials for willful and wanton as well as spoilation, but rather wanted a single jury to be told it had to resolve the former before considering the latter. She said that’s how the trial played out, with Budzinski telling the jury it could only rule in favor of the plaintiffs for spoilation if it “found that the loss or destruction of” the dashboard footage was a proximate cause of their inability to prove the willful and wanton allegation.
Regarding spoilation itself, Van Time wrote the procedural history “is convoluted,” noting the record contained no ruling from Budzinski that Dolton had a duty to preserve the video but that the jury did make that decision. Although whether a duty exists is supposed to be a legal question for a judge, rather than a factual dispute for a jury, Van Tine said the village “forfeited any claim of error arising from allowing the jury to decide whether Dolton had a duty to preserve evidence” because it didn’t object to the spoilation jury instruction nor did it propose alternate or additional instructions or raise the issue in its posttrial motion or appellate brief.
As to whether Dolton breached that duty, the panel again affirmed the jury’s decision as being sufficiently rooted in evidence. Van Tine pointed to an officer’s trial testimony about the presence of a camera, as well as multiple officers saying the cameras begin recording when lights or sirens are activated. She then noted the likelihood of the actual recording being either transferred to police station servers or stored on a hard drive in the squad car. Regarding preservation, Van Tine wrote, “The jury heard that, 12 days after this incident, a court entered an order requiring Dolton to preserve evidence related to it. Yet Dolton never produced the video.”
And, had the video been available, the panel said, the litigation might have played out differently.
“The video would have depicted Dolton police pursuing Sorrells down Greenwood Road and onto a narrow one-way street in the direction of oncoming traffic approaching a dead-end T-intersection,” Van Tine wrote. “While the jury knew that these events occurred, the jury was not able to see how they occurred.”
GPS data was not enough for a jury to determine if police were following Sorrell at a safe distance, the panel said, and the absence of footage meant “the officers were able to paint a virtually uncontested picture of this incident, which is presumably why the jury found in Dolton’s favor on the willful and wanton claim.”
The jury instruction Dolton challenged involved allowing an inference the missing evidence would’ve been detrimental to the village. But the panel said it found “no error” in Budzinski’s determination, explaining the record showed the village had no excuse for not having the video. Furthermore, Dolton didn’t properly advance its instruction arguments during the trial.
“The jury received a separate instruction on plaintiffs’ burden of proof and the elements of their spoliation claim,” Van Tine wrote. “That instruction clearly stated that the jury had to find for Dolton if it concluded that plaintiffs did not carry their burden of proof on each element of spoliation. We presume that the jury followed the instructions and the record provides no basis to accept Dolton’s theory.”
With respect to closing arguments, Van Tine noted the village did not, during the trial, object to the comments it challenged on appeal, yielding another forfeiture. The panel also said the appeal argument about a denial of a requested special interrogatory is irrelevant as it addressed only the willful and wanton claim in which the village prevailed.
In January, the same plaintiffs asked a judge to force the village to pay the $33.5 million as it never moved for a stay of that verdict while the appeal was pending. That suit raises the possibility of a court ordering the village to raise property taxes to cover the verdict and also details ongoing allegations of financial impropriety against Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard, who also is Thornton Township supervisor.
Loevy & Loevy did not respond to a request for comment.