Settling at a significant sum, the City of Chicago appears poised to pay $1.25 million to Isabella Keating, the woman injured by a falling deteriorated light pole in 2020. According to a report by CBS Chicago, the city's Finance Committee is deliberating on the settlement proposal today, with a full City Council vote expected to follow on Wednesday.
Sitting in her jeep at a Streeterville intersection on February 25, 2020, Keating's life was violently interrupted by a collapsing light pole, which resulted from its severely rusted base—a detail that responding police officers found out of the way to investigate. The potential settlement, revealing a city grappling with the physical deterioration of its infrastructure, has risen from an unfortunate narrative where, between 2014 and 2018, Chicago received over 7,000 complaints about unstable poles along with hundreds of property damage reports, as CBS Chicago detailed.
Keating's legal representative, Michael Demetrio, emphasized the gravity of these poles, labeling them as "ticking time bombs across the city of Chicago" in his statement obtained by CBS Chicago. It took a lawsuit, filed by Corboy & Demetrio, to stimulate action, requiring the city to protect evidence in Keating's case—a case not isolated, but part of a troubling pattern, as shown with the lawsuit filed on behalf of Maya Kirk, another victim of a rusted pole incident, Corboy & Demetrio reported.
Moving toward a resolution, the city has replaced around 4,400 of these structures, but for Keating and others stricken by this urban decay, such efforts came too late. As captured on March 9, 2020, Judge Allen Price Walker issued an Emergency Order of Protection mandating the city to preserve inspection records and any relevant surveillance footage, as detailed by Corboy & Demetrio. This move aligns with the firm's call for accountability, citing the city's negligence in inspecting and maintaining the light poles and failure to prevent hazardous accumulation of water and debris at their bases.
