What part of $1 million don’t you understand?

City disputes jury award

COURTS | Bruce Rushton

While city officials second-guess the verdict, two jurors say that the jury intended to award more than $1 million to the family of a boy who drowned in Lake Springfield.

The jurors both spoke on condition of anonymity. One simply confirmed that the jury intended to award more than $1 million and did not address other questions. The other who answered follow-up questions said that she learned from media accounts that the city might ask a judge to clarify the verdict so that the city would pay $525,000.

“It’s bothered me since I read it,” said the juror, who said that the jury intended to award $1.05 million, not half that amount, to the family of Eric Jones, who was 16 when he drowned in 2007 at the beach operated by City Water, Light and Power.

The lawsuit was broken down into two counts. The plaintiff in the first count alleged that lifeguards weren’t properly watching the water when Jones, who could not swim, went under water spitting distance away from a lifeguard was watching a distant diving board. In the second count, the plaintiff alleged that lifeguards, once notified that Jones was missing, failed to follow an emergency plan designed to quickly find swimmers in trouble.

The jury filled out two verdict forms, one for each count, with each form stating that the city should pay $525,000. The juror who answered several questions about the case said that the jury considered awarding a different dollar figure for each count, which might have cleared up any confusion, but ultimately decided to award identical amounts for each count. The decision was unanimous, with all 12 jurors signing the two verdict forms.

“We understood the verdict forms,” the juror said. “We did the math. … There was some conversation as to whether or not we needed to make it (awards for each count) equal. We decided, what’s the difference?” Todd Greenburg, corporation counsel, said the city intends to ask Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge John Schmidt to clarify the verdict.

“We think it’s…clear that the jury intended to award $525,000,” Greenburg said.

Greenburg also said the city believes that the jury got it wrong in deciding the city’s conduct was willful and wanton, the legal threshold the plaintiff had to meet to win the case.

“We don’t think, even looking at the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, that it was proven that the city or its employees acted with willful or wanton conduct,” Greenburg said. “Obviously, this was an extremely sympathetic case for a jury. Here you’ve got a young man at the very beginning of his life who died. We think that was a factor in this. I don’t want to cast aspersions on the jurors. I think there was some emotional component to their decision.”

Not so, according to the juror who spoke at length about the case.

“I do think it was a very conscientious group,” the juror said. “I think that we were given enough information to make an intelligent decision.”

The city blames Jones for his own death, saying that the boy, who did not know how to swim, should not have ventured into deep water. An aquatics safety expert hired by the city compared Jones’ conduct to playing in traffic.

The juror said that she was swayed by testimony that showed that some lifeguards, including the one who was closest to Jones when the boy went under, were not certified to watch open-water swimming areas as opposed to swimming pools. She also noted that the lifeguards had never practiced an emergency plan.

“That was, for me, compelling, and I think that the rest of the group would think so as well,” the woman said. “It seemed like there should be more training toward whatever emergency could possibly happen.”

Lifeguards and bystanders described a chaotic scene after Jones’ companions, who also struggled to save themselves after losing their footing in a dropoff, told a lifeguard that the boy had gone under water. Instead of immediately summoning other lifeguards, the guard dove into the murky water by himself. Under a written emergency plan, lifeguards were supposed to blow whistles to signal an emergency, but no whistles were immediately blown. Lifeguards mistakenly concentrated the search at the deepest end of the swimming area, even though they’d been told by Jones’ companions that he couldn’t swim and so could not have ventured out that far. When lifeguards joined hands and walked the area where Jones had disappeared, they found the boy almost immediately. But that was more than 10 minutes after his brother and two cousins saw him disappear under water.

While at least eight lifeguards played volleyball or otherwise relaxed, a lifeguard chair within direct line of sight of Jones and his companions was unoccupied. Less than a month before the tragedy, the city had received a complaint from a woman who said that just one lifeguard was watching more than 50 children in the water while other lifeguards were inside the beach clubhouse.

During closing arguments, Todd Bresney, attorney for Jones’ family, noted that he was standing as far away from jurors as the boy had been from a lifeguard who didn’t notice that Jones and his companions were struggling for their lives. Lifeguards, Bresney said, simply panicked.

“These were horrific facts,” Bresney said after the verdict came in. “A kid shouldn’t drown 10 feet in front of a guard chair.”