IN THE NEWS
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin - March 19. 1999
$2.25 million awarded to woman raped in CBA building
By Martha Neil - Law Bulletin Staff Writer
In what may be the largest premises liability award ever made in Illinois over a sexual assault, a Cook County Circuit Court jury has given $2.25 million to a former employee of The Chicago Bar Association who was raped on an unoccupied floor of the organization's office building.
The total jury verdict was $3,381,000, but it was reduced by 33 percent to $2,254,177 for contributory negligence because the victim had gone alone to take a break on a floor of the building that she didn't work on, said Kathleen T. Zellner, a Naperville lawyer who represented the victim in the case.
There is no record of a higher verdict in Illinois in a sexual assault case in the past decade, so this is probably the biggest award ever in the state for a premises liability rape case, said John Kirkton, editor of the Cook County Jury Verdict Reporter.
Prior to trial, the defendants offered nothing whatsoever to the plaintiff, Lynn Green, an aspiring Shakespearean actress who worked at the CBA as a waitress and receptionist. Now 40 and living in California, she was so emotionally traumatized by the attack that she hasn't had sex with her husband for five years and suffers from post-traumatic stress symptoms, Zellner said.
Because there is no duty under Illinois law on the part of either a landowner or a property management company to protect individuals from criminal acts of third parties, there was no legal basis for an award and no reason to make a settlement offer, said Timothy D. McVey of Purcell & Wardrope Chtd. He represented the defendants in the case.
"We just assumed it was a legal issue case, we didn't believe we had a legal duty to the plantiff, and instead of settling the case we decided to try it," he said.
Critical to the success of the case before the seven-woman, five-man jury was the plaintiff's ability to subpoena the rapist, Drake Sanders, to testify about how he made entry into the building, Zellner said.
A homeless person with holes in his jacket who "stands out like a sore thumb" at the time, Sanders said he entered the CBA building through the front door on at least five occasions prior to the rape and wandered around freely, stealing from building employees, Zellner recounted.
Then, on the day of the rap, May 25, 1994, Sanders again entered the building at about 2:30 p.m. through the front door, and rode the elevator up to the 17th floor, an unoccupied area set up with a model office condominium to show to prospective buyers, Zellner said.
When he spotted his victim-to-be there, he rode the elevator down to the 16th floor, where the CBA was storing donated clothes to give to the homeless. After taking a couple of belts he rode back up to the 17th floor, found the woman in a restroom, and bound, gagged and raped her, threatening her with an icepick for 40 minutes, Zellner said.
Sanders was caught, based on a very detailed composite sketch that the victim spent eight hours helping the police develop, Zellner noted.
Two days after the rap, a police officer was standing in front of the CBA building handing out copies of the sketch and saw a man who matched the description - wearing the same clothes the victim had described - about to enter the building, Zellner said.
The man was Sanders. When questioned by police, he proved to be carrying an icepick and eventually admitted to the rape, Zellner said. He pleaded guilty to the crime, received an 18-year sentence, and is likely to be released from prison within the next decade, she continued.
Zellner speculated that he had cooperated with the subpoena because he had some remorse about the crime. Although a drug habit brought him down in more recent years, Sanders is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and was honorably discharged, she said.
Zellner and McVey did not agree about the basis for liability underlying the jury verdict:
She described it as a premises liability case.
He said it was not a true premises liability case at all, but based on an alleged voluntary assumption of duty by an employee of the defendant management company, Miglin-Beitler Management Corp. That employee testified that he would "greet people when they came into the building, have messengers sign in, monitor the fire protection and other life safety systems in the building, and ... basically patrol only the first floor of the building," McVey recounted.
"The theory of liability is that we voluntarily agreed to do something, and we didn't do it, so the status of the plantiff wasn't important and all the things that are typically part of a premises case weren't important."
What duty to the plaintiff was allegedly assumed in this manner, however, still isn't clear to him even after the two-week trial, McVey said Friday. "It was the most bizarre trial, from a duty standpoint, I've ever been involved in."
Under a standard premises liability theory, "the court ruled that she was not an invitee. Therefore the owner of the property owed no duty to her," he said of Green. And "there is no evidence in this case that there was a dangerous condition on the 17th floor. There were never any incidents on the 17th floor."
After the verdict, "the jury foreman said to me ... that because there was evidence introduced regarding rapes in the Loop area in the months preceding this, that they thought Miglin-Beitler had a duty to increase security in the building," McVey noted.
Both lawyers agreed that the issue of whether there were, in effect, "no trespassing" signs posted on the 17th floor was a critical one.
"Our witnesses said there were signs, plaintiff's witnesses said there were no signs," McVey said.
"The duty was to post security signs warning that the area was unauthorized," Zellner said. "And the evidence was that there were no signs posted."
MBMC was found 34 percent liable for Green's injuries, and the owner of that floor of the CBA building, Plymouth Court Partners, was found 33 percent liable. However, J. Paul Beitler, a partner of PCP and president of the management company, who was named personally as a defendant, was not found liable.
A settlement was reached some time ago with a security company with which the management company had contracted, Zellner said. She did not specify how much the settlement was with Kane Security Co.
McVey declined to say specifically whether the losing defendants plan to appeal, but said "we're planning to file a post-trial motion and go through the usual procedures."
The case is Lynn Green v. Plymouth Court Partners, et al., No.
94 L 10923. It was tried before Circuit Judge Sharon J. Coleman.
