Jury Awards $4.49 Million to Motorcyclist Who Lost a Leg After a Bus Driver Waved Him Into a Red-Light Crash

Just past midnight on June 16, 1988, Aleksander Antol was riding his motorcycle southwest on Archer Avenue in Chicago, on his way home from work with a co-worker on the back. His light at Archer and Halsted was green. A Chicago Transit Authority bus sat at the stop on Halsted with part of its body extending into the intersection, and Antol slowed to about 10 miles per hour because he was not sure the bus would move.

From roughly 30 yards away, the bus driver motioned him forward. Antol hesitated, and the driver waved him on twice more. A taxi driver behind him saw the gestures. The moment Antol accelerated into the intersection, a station wagon driven by Liborio Chavez-Pereda, heading north on Halsted at about 40 miles per hour, ran the red light and hit him. Police cited Chavez three times and issued Antol nothing.

Antol's left leg suffered compound fractures and had to be amputated below the knee. He also had a fracture near his left shoulder and multiple contusions. His treating physician testified that he walks with an abnormal gait, will never be stable on his feet because of lost sensation, and may already be developing premature arthritis. She also said further testing was needed to check for nerve damage in his right leg, which could worsen. Antol, a Polish immigrant who had worked as a freight elevator operator, was 45 at trial and testified that he could no longer do any job he had held.

He sued Chavez and the CTA in Cook County in December 1988. The CTA's defense at trial was that no bus had been at the intersection at all. Its records had been destroyed within six months of the crash, it never identified the drivers, and its own schedule showed four buses due through the intersection around that time. The court later upheld the instruction telling jurors they could infer the missing drivers' testimony would have hurt the CTA.

The jury returned $4,492,710: $1,750,000 for pain and suffering, $1,250,000 for disability, $625,000 for disfigurement, $636,720 for lost earnings and $230,990 for medical expenses. It assigned 60 percent of the fault to the CTA and 40 percent to Chavez. Philip H. Corboy, Francis Patrick Murphy, Shawn S. Kasserman and David A. Novoselsky of Corboy & Demetrio represented Antol.

The CTA appealed. On October 11, 1996, the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, rejected every challenge to the damages and affirmed the award in full, finding it within the range of fair compensation given the amputation, the permanent loss of mobility and the lasting pain. It did reverse the 60/40 split as against the manifest weight of the evidence and sent the case back for a new trial on how fault should be divided between the two defendants. The opinion does not say how that retrial came out.