HUGE VERDICT AGAINST COOK COUNTY SHERIFF

As reported by Steve Patterson in the May 25, 2006, Chicago Sun-Times, a Cook County jury recently reached an enormous verdict on behalf of a 58 year old woman who was rendered a quadriplegic after the car she was driving was struck by a Cook County Sheriff's Squad Car. There was evidence at trial that the squad car was going 70 miles per hour when it slammed into the rear of Margaret Petraski's vehicle. Petraski was turning into an intersection when the squad car sped through a red light and into the Petraski vehicle. The officer was responding to a non-emergency call. Petraski who now is cared for in a nursing home was awarded over $28 million dollars. A hotly contested issue at trial was the admissiblity of evidence that at the time of the occurrence, Petraski's blood alcohol content[BAC] was .11. In Illinois, any reading of .08 or higher is considered legally drunk. Judge Richard Elrod ruled that the plaintiff's BAC was irrelevant for a couple of reasons. First, the procedures used at the hospital to obtain the reading are known to elevate the actual reading. In addition, the article indicated that the trial court also kept the BAC out because there was no evidence that Petraski had done anything that contributed to the crash.

Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan, who has been known to tangle with judges in the past, ripped Judge Elrod's on the alcohol, noting that "In my 35 years of law enforcement, experience, I've never heard of a judge barring evidence of drinking and driving in an auto accident case. " Sheahan went on to note that "...driving while intoxicated is never irrelevant". Actually, he is wrong. Sometimes evidence of drinking is inadmissible. In this case, where the plaintiff was not shown to have done a single thing wrong, permitting evidence of a potentially compromised BAC would have been unduly prejudicial. And there is a final irony to the verdict. Judge Elrod used to occupy the same chair Sheahan presently occupies - Elrod is a former Sheriff of Cook County.