Articles Posted in Ladder falls

The engineer who was in charge of supervising a construction project for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago reportedly conceded he had not been aware of the hazardous condition that allegedly caused a 30-foot fall by a contractor’s employee. The question that attracted dueling amicus curiae briefs in the Illinois Supreme Court was whether the Water District was entitled to an immunity for discretionary policy decisions under Section 2-201 of the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act.

With two of the seven Illinois Supreme Court justices dissenting, the Supreme Court concluded that Section 2-201, which grants immunity for acts or omissions involving discretionary policy decisions only applies if the defendant presents “evidence of a conscious decision by its employee pertaining to the conduct alleged to have caused the plaintiff’s injuries.”

And “if the employee was totally unaware of the condition prior to the plaintiff being injured, he or she could not possible have exercised discretion with respect to that condition.”

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