Parking Garage Death Lawsuit Settled for $700,000
By TRACY MOSS
tmoss@news-gazette.com
PARKING GARAGE DEATH IN DANVILLE LAWSUIT SETTLED FOR $700,000
DANVILLE – A wrongful death lawsuit filed against the city of Danville in 2006 was settled for $700,000, according to court documents filed earlier this week in Vermilion County Circuit Court.
The lawsuit was filed on April 11, 2006, by the father of Charles Christopher Gaston, 17, who was found the morning of April 5, 2006, in a collapsed stairwell at the city’s parking garage at the corner of North and Walnut streets. Mr. Gaston died of severe head injuries, according to a coroner’s report. The lawsuit alleged that the city knew or should have known that the stairwell needed repairs or replacement.
The court accepted the settlement between the city and the family on April 20, and the settlement documents were filed this week.
According to those documents, Mr. Gaston’s father, Charles Gaston Jr., will receive $100,000 of the settlement as will each of the other family members, including Mr. Gaston’s mother, Carol Barfel, and his two sisters, Monica Gaston and Mariah Gaston.
The settlement amount also includes a $256,370 attorney fee for the firm of Kupets and DeCaro in Chicago, which represented the family, and the settlement amount also includes $43,630 in costs and expenses advanced by the law firm.
Mayor Scott Eisenhauer said it was the city’s liability insurance company’s decision to settle the case, and the insurance company would be covering the settlement.
According to the Danville police investigation, Mr. Gaston was at the parking garage with two friends the night before he was found. The friends told police they were throwing rocks off the top level when they ran from the garage in a different direction than Mr. Gaston, who took the stairwell. The two boys heard a crash but thought it was possibly a car and did not go back to look for their friend.
Three years before the accident, the parking garage stairwell was inspected by McClintock Civil Engineering Service, which reported to the city that the stairwell was beginning to fail and cited an accumulation of “pack rust”, a collection of rust between metal parts, as the problem. The engineer also reported that the stairwell had no connection at its base and that it was very springy and would be prone to collapse under occupant load.
The report stated that the city could replaced the stairway but concluded that would be expensive and wasn’t necessary. The engineer recommended two options: a $30,000 replacement of the stairwell or an $8,500 option to repair it. The city chose the less expensive repair option.
The Gaston family also named in its lawsuit McClintock Civil Engineering Service and the construction company, Schomburg and Schomburg, which carried out the recommended repairs to the stairwell.
Both of those defendants settled out of court with the plaintiffs much earlier in the court process.
In September 2008, Vermilion County Circuit Court Judge Craig DeArmond threw out the lawsuit, stating that the city was immune from liability because Mr. Gaston was not an “intended” user of the parking garage. The Illinois Appellate Court reversed that decision in 2009, sending it back to Vermilion County Circuit Court for trial, where it lingered until last month’s settlement was reached.