Lawsuit Launched After City Truck Hits Eight Pedestrians | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

It didn’t take long for a lawsuit to be launched in Chicago, Illinois (IL) after a driver lost control of a City of Chicago truck and mounted a sidewalk, injuring eight pedestrians. The Streets & Sanitation worker was charged with DUI after he lost control of his pickup truck and hit a group of people on State Street on May 21, 2011, abc7 news.com reported.

The driver had a blood alcohol level of .183, according to police, and investigators found an open bottle of brandy inside his truck.

A lawsuit was filed by the family of Jennifer Anton, a nanny, who was pushing an infant in a stroller when the truck swerved onto the sidewalk. She managed to get the child out of the way of the truck, saving her life, but was badly hurt herself. Anton’s serious personal injuries include a broken pelvis and fractures to her hips and her legs.

Cities can be sued for the actions or inactions of their workers in some states more easily than others. Generally, cities and counties in Virginia cannot be sued themselves under an old law called governmental immunity, though the individual municipal workers can be under some circumstances.

Last year, the City of Virginia Beach, VA, was named in a lawsuit over the death of a homeless man who was killed by a city garbage truck. The city was later dropped from the lawsuit, our experienced Virginia personal injury attorneys reported.

The Hampton Roads cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach paid about $7.5 million to more than 1,700 victims of accidents involving commercial vehicles between 2004 and 2006, according to a Virginian-Pilot analysis.

Our Virginia truck injury accident attorneys have been involved in numerous cases in which trucks and commercial vehicles have caused injuries. Last year a $3.5 million settlement was reached in a case in which a tractor trailer driver rear ended a car on I-64 in Norfolk, VA. Our client, a 25-year-old man, was trapped in the car that caught fire and lost his life.

When alcohol is involved in a truck wreck, the consequences can often be tragic. Recently we reported on how the families of four people who were killed in a West Virginia DUI truck wreck won a $2.69 million lawsuit verdict.

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