Disabled woman's parents fight to advance suit against Chicago Police | April 13, 2012

Daughter permanently injured in 2006, but legal action targeting police stuck in appellate limbo

By David Heinzmann, Chicago Tribune reporter

{photo: Rick and Kathy Paine visit with their daughter Christina Eilman, then 21, in August 2006 at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. They are suing the Chicago Police Department for releasing Eilman, who was having an apparent mental breakdown, in May in a high-crime area where she was sexually assaulted and eventually plunged from a seventh-floor window, sustaining severe and permanent injuries. (Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune / August 23, 2006)}

Lawyers for a permanently injured California woman on Thursday asked a federal judge to sidestep a two-year delay in her parents' lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department.

Arguing that delays in the case are further harming Christina Eilman's health, her attorney asked a U.S. District judge to let part of her parents' lawsuit go forward while they wait for appellate judges to rule on an appeal filed in February 2010.

The lawsuit has two significant parts: claims of negligence alleging that the police knew Eilman would likely meet great harm when they released her in a high-crime neighborhood during her mental breakdown in 2006, and claims that police violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by denying her access to needed mental health care while in custody.

After arresting her for erratic behavior at Midway Airport and ignoring a police commander's instructions to take her to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, officers transported her to the Wentworth District lockup in one of the city's highest-crime areas.

The next evening, after hours of apparent psychotic behavior by Eilman, police released her with no assistance or direction, several miles from where she had been arrested. She wandered aimlessly toward a high-rise of the Robert Taylor Homes, where she was sexually assaulted before plunging from a seventh-floor window. She suffered a severe brain injury, a shattered pelvis, collapsed lung and numerous other injuries.

Two weeks before the trial was set to start in March 2010, the city appealed U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall's ruling that kept police officers as defendants in the negligence part of the case. While noting that the appeal looked like nothing more than a stall tactic, Kendall nonetheless forwarded the matter to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the meantime, she placed a stay on the ADA claims in the case, meaning they would be frozen until the appellate court ruled. It has been 18 months since lawyers made oral arguments before the three-judge appeals panel.

Since July 2011, Eilman's lawyer, Jeffrey Singer, has filed three motions asking the appellate court to make a decision, but has heard no response. On Thursday, he turned back to Kendall, the trial judge.

"The substantial injustice inherent in an extensively delayed trial (e.g. locating fact witnesses, passage of time and its effect on the reliability of memories, etc.) is detrimental to the interest of this indigent and permanently disabled young woman," Singer wrote in the notice he filed.

Eilman, who was 21 and had recently dropped out of UCLA at the time of the incident, has no health insurance and is completely dependent on California state medical aid and her parents' care. Her recovery plateaued years ago and she will remain severely physically and mentally impaired for the rest of her life, according to her parents.

dheinzmann@tribune.com
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
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