Chicago City Council approves nearly $80 million to cover settlements in 7 lawsuits
Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were approved on Wednesday to pay out settlements to people suing the city of Chicago.
The City Council approved $80 million in payouts in seven lawsuits on Wedneday, prompting some aldermen to sound the alarm that this has to stop.
City lawyers said if these cases went to trial, juries could make it even costlier for Chicago taxpayers.
Cases range from the city botching corporate contracts to mishandling cases of people in need to police misconduct allegations.
Three years ago, Arthur Almendarez and John Galvan were released from prison. They'd spent 35 years locked up after Chicago police detectives beat confessions out of them for a 1986 Little Village arson that killed two people before their names were cleared in 2022.
"I'm trying not to let the anger poison my soul," Galvan said in 2022 after he was set free.
On Wednesday, the City Council approved $20 million in settlements for each of them, along with another $8 million for co-defendant Francisco Nanez, who also spent more than 30 years in prison before he was cleared.
Also approved was a $5 million dollar settlement for Briana Keys, who lost both legs to frostbite after being locked out of her apartment in 2021 while barefoot and wearing only a bathrobe in 5-degree temperatures.
Her lawsuit claims she couldn't get help for hours despite calls to 911 and 311. She also claimed that even when police officers spoke to her while she was walking to a nearby police station, they wouldn't give her a ride. City attorneys said the officers claimed they offered to call her an ambulance, or drive her to her mother's house or a police station, but she refused, but Keys, who was also suffering a mental health crisis, insisted officers refused to let her get in their squad car.
Several aldermen objected to settling that lawsuit, noting officers said they offered Keys help but she refused, but Finance Committee chair Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) suggested officers should have done more to make sure Keys got help.
Meantime, the council unanimously approved a $15.5 million payout to the company that bought the rights to Chicago parking meters under the Daley administration. The city took thousands of parking meters out of service during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that violated the agreement.
In total, the City Council approved $77.9 million in settlements in seven lawsuits, including more than $62 million in cases alleging police misconduct. The city had budgeted $82 million in 2025 to cover police misconduct settlements, and had already blown through that money before Wednesday's settlements, less than halfway through the year.
Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th), who voted against several of the settlements, said the city is on track to rack up $300 million in settlements this year.
"We have to learn that some situations, while tragic, are not necessarily our fault. They are not the responsibility of taxpayers," he said. "We are not God's piggybank. We cannot keep doing this, because we know there are hundreds of other settlements that are coming down the pike."
However, Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), who chairs the City Council Budget Committee, noted that city attorneys determined all of those lawsuits could cost the city far more if they had gone to trial, and said aldermen need to put their trust in the Law Department's recommendations.
The city's budget director, Annette Guzman, said earlier this week that Chicago is not alone in dealing with the high cost of settling lawsuits. She said other major cities, like Los Angeles, are being similarly squeezed by a combination of past allegations of wrongdoings.
"We're not only dealing with legacy old cases, but we're also dealing with the backlog due to the closing of courts during the pandemic. So all of that is converging at the same time," she said on Tuesday
Mayor Brandon Johnson this week accused his predecessors of kicking some of these cases down the road before he took office, rather than settling them sooner for less money.
The mayor said he is going to stop that practice, but his budget allotted for only $85 million in settlement costs for 2025, and the actual cost is likely to be two to three times larger than that.
Chris Tye
Chris Tye is a reporter and fill-in anchor at CBS2 Chicago.
contributed to this report.
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