After 2-Year Delay, Eilman Police Negligence Suit Can Commence

After more than 2 years in legal limbo, Christina Eilman’s suit against the Chicago Police Department can finally move forward, the Chicago Tribune reports.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the mentally ill California woman can sue the Chicago Police Department for releasing her into a high-crime area where she was raped and critically injured in 2006. In 2010, before the trial could start, the city’s lawyers filed an appeal claiming that the police had no duty to take care of Eilman. It took the appellate court over two years to issue its decision.

Police arrested 21-year-old Eilman on May 8, 2006 after she caused a disturbance at Midway Airport while suffering a bipolar breakdown. Instead of taking Eilman to a hospital for mental evaluation, police released her in a high-crime neighborhood where she was sexually assaulted and fell from a seventh-story window. Eilman is permanently mentally and physically disabled as a result of the fall.

Eilman’s family filed a negligence suit against the Chicago Police Department in February 2010, but the suit was stalled before the trial could start. The city’s lawyers filed an appeal in federal court, claiming the officers could not be sued due to qualified immunity, a defense that protects the government and officials from lawsuits. Until Thursday, the suit had been stuck in judicial purgatory.

Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the court’s opinion, didn’t agree with the city’s contention. “They might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo,” Easterbrook wrote. “She is white and well off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and thus a potential target for crime.” The court denied the city’s appeal, stating that the matter of whether the police acted negligently could go to trial.

In a personal injury suit based on a theory of negligence, the plaintiff must show that the defendant owed her a duty of care, and that the plaintiff was injured as a direct result of the defendant’s breach of that duty of care. Christina Eilman’s lawyers must now show that the Chicago police officers had a duty to take care of the woman, and in dropping her off in a dangerous neighborhood, they breached that duty and caused her injuries.

Related Resources:



Find a Chicago Personal Injury Attorney (FindLaw)

Court: Mentally Ill Woman Can Sue CPD (ABC News)

Negligence (FindLaw)

Perfect Storm of Police Misconduct Suits Slams City (FindLaw’s Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog)




The Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog

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