A tourist couple hit by a car fleeing Chicago police downtown and left with devastating injuries may soon win a $32 million lawsuit settlement from the city.
Aldermen are set to vote on the deal recommended by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Law Department Friday, according to the City Council Finance Committee agenda.
They will also vote on a previously stalled and hotly contested $1.25 million settlement for the family of Dexter Reed, the man shot and killed by officers in a gunfight that followed a plainclothes police traffic stop last year.
The lawsuit filed by Bryce and Amy Summary of St. Louis alleges a white Mercedes pulled over by police for a tinted license plate hit them as it fled on a May 2022 evening. The crash left Bryce, in town with his family for a work conference, with two amputated legs and towering medical bills.
The couple’s costly injuries were a “direct and proximate result” of the city’s negligence, the lawsuit alleged.
The $32 million deal, if advanced by the committee and approved by the council, will represent yet another huge expense for a city outspending the money it budgeted this year for legal settlements.
But many at City Hall view the eye-catching deals as an essential way to save money: If settlements aren’t approved, cases go to court, where payouts can be far higher. Just last month, a federal jury awarded two wrongfully convicted Chicago men $120 million, though the city said it will appeal the decision.
The city would pay $20 million in the proposed Summary family deal, while its insurer would pay another $12 million.
Officers tried to pull over the driver who hit the couple, named in the lawsuit as Joseph Garcia, when they saw that his white Mercedes had a dark, tinted cover obscuring his license plate. Garcia stopped in the 600 block of North Michigan Avenue in Streeterville after the police lights went on. Then he fled.
Surrounded by late spring dinner crowds on Magnificent Mile sidewalks that Thursday night, Garcia sped through a red light and turned onto Ohio Street. Police pursued him in a squad car, passing vehicle and pedestrian traffic, according to the lawsuit.
A police officer violated city rules by starting the pursuit, failing to call it off and failing to alert supervisors over a “non-serious traffic offense,” the lawsuit said. The city also failed to install sufficient protective barriers “to protect citizens from known risks and hazards,” it continued.
The St. Louis couple was walking to dinner on North Michigan Avenue with their two sons when Garcia fled police. Bryce had a work conference in town, according to the lawsuit.
“Look at that,” Bryce yelled to his family as the white Mercedes drove toward them, the lawsuit said.
Amy dove and her husband pushed her out of the way. She suffered scrapes, bruises and contusions as the car missed her by inches, according to the lawsuit. But the car hit Bryce.
It skipped a curb and crashed into a utility box. He was pinned underneath. Garcia fled on foot. Nearby health care workers applied tourniquets to the trapped man’s legs.
He would need six surgeries. Eventually, both legs were amputated. He also suffered nine fractured ribs and a fractured vertebrae, all together contributing to “enormous medical costs,” according to the lawsuit.
Garcia remains at large and has not been arrested, according to the lawsuit.
The Reed settlement is sure to spark heated debate when it comes up for a second scheduled vote Friday. It had previously been set for a vote in late February, but ended up in legislative limbo after Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell pulled it from consideration.
At the time, Dowell said aldermen needed more time to discuss the settlement. Aldermen often delay planned votes when they do not have the support to pass an item.
Some aldermen believe the city should not settle Reed’s family’s lawsuit because Reed fired first in the March 2024 incident. Police body camera footage shows him shooting an officer before police opened fire. Others said the settlement was a fiscally responsible move to avoid a larger payout in court.
Five officers fired at least 79 rounds at Reed, striking him 13 times, after Reed initially complied with orders to roll down his window but then appeared to disregard a command to roll down a window on his car’s passenger side, according to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and an autopsy report.
Reed got out of his car before falling to the pavement. One officer fired three more shots at Reed as he was lying motionless on the street. That 23-year-old officer fired at least 50 rounds during the 41 seconds of gunfire, according to COPA.
The lawsuit from Reed’s family alleged officers escalated the traffic stop by pointing guns at Reed and “demonstrated a gross disregard for the sanctity of human life” by shooting his motionless body. It also called the traffic stop “unlawful” and “pretextual.”
Originally Published: April 9, 2025 at 10:05 AM CDT
