Cook County Jury Awards $3.4 Million to Student Whose Leg Was Amputated After an O'Hare Shuttle Bus Hit Her

On January 10, 1988, Mette Jorgensen came back to the United States from her home in Denmark to study chiropractic medicine in Davenport, Iowa. She landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, where arriving international passengers were being handled in a temporary facility known as Terminal 4, and walked to a chartered Tri-State bus parked in the bus loading zone.

The driver told her to put her luggage in the bay compartment on the driver's side. She was standing in the area the City had designated for bus loading. She put her bags in the bay, and as she straightened up, an O'Hare shuttle bus traveling in the single lane of through traffic entered the unprotected loading zone and struck her. The injuries led to the amputation of her left leg.

The layout was the City's own work. Chicago had designed the temporary terminal in 1985, placing it inside the old parking garage and turning the hotel road into driveways and loading zones. The design put the bus loading zone directly beside a lane of moving vehicles. Arrivals and departures were not separated, and the curved roadway kept steering traffic toward the loading zone. At trial Jorgensen presented evidence that the City had put barricades along the taxicab and limousine lane to shield passengers from that traffic but had put none on the side where buses loaded. The City had also adopted a regulation requiring loading zone attendants to be on duty to watch passengers load buses. None was working that day, even though an O'Hare ground supervisor had asked for them.

Jorgensen sued in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Her defendants were the City of Chicago, Diana Whiteside, and three transportation companies: C.W. Transportation Services, Tri-State Tours and River Trails Transportation. The City asked the trial court to dismiss the claim, arguing that the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act shielded it from suit over barriers and supervision. The trial court refused, and the case went to a jury.

The jury found for Jorgensen against every defendant, the City included, and awarded $3,400,041.17. The trial court entered judgment on the verdict on November 5, 1990. The published opinions do not name her trial lawyer. John D. Cooney of Cooney & Conway in Chicago was her counsel in both appeals that followed.

The City appealed. On June 30, 1992, the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, affirmed. The court held that Jorgensen was an intended and permitted user of the property because she was standing in a zone the City itself had designated for loading passengers and luggage. It also held that the immunities for failing to provide barriers or supervision did not apply, since her claim rested on the City's decision to build a layout that was not reasonably safe once in use, and that the evidence supported the verdict.

A second appeal, decided in 1994, concerned only a dispute between Jorgensen and her Danish travel insurer over reimbursement of an earlier payment. Cooney again appeared for Jorgensen. That ruling did not touch the verdict against the defendants.