Chicago taxpayers will spend $3.5 million to compensate a man who suffered a traumatic brain injury when when a dead tree neglected by the city fell and hit him on his head.
Nicholas Pellegrino was examining his car battery on a leafy residential street near his North Side home when the tree that had been the subject of several calls to the city’s 311 nonemergency number fell on him.
The accident was Dec. 21, 2020, in the 700 block of West Hutchinson in Uptown.
Pellegrino, 28 at the time, spent almost two months in the hospital, some of that time in a medically induced coma, according to his attorney Colin Dunn.
The city was aware of the precarious nature of the tree and the danger it posed but failed to act on those complaints, Dunn said.
“This one fell through the cracks. … When they get 311 calls about tree issues, they need to send out certified arborists that can look at it and decide if the tree is safe or not — especially … where it’s a residential street with high traffic,” Dunn said.
“There had been a couple of complaints in August where storms had come through and taken down some pretty big trees. The neighbors made some calls to 311. Although the city came out and looked at it, it doesn’t look they actually inspected the tree.”
Multimillion-dollar settlements tied to alleged negligence by the city are normally reserved for cases involving a death, a catastrophic injury or a wrongful conviction.
In this case, Pellegrino can walk, talk and work as a cost analyst.
“If you were to meet him, he may seem normal,” Dunn said.
But Pellegrino struggles with “cognitive issues and a seizure disorder,” Dunn said. “He’s worked very hard with great doctors and therapists to get back to where he is. But there’s a long way to go. … He still has some issues that he’s living through.”
In response to Pellegrino’s lawsuit, the city argued it has no obligation to “engage in systematic inspections of the public way” and has “no routine inspection system for trees.”
The city also provided Dunn with a spreadsheet showing that from early 2019 to early 2021 it received 10 service requests about trees in the 700 block of West Hutchinson Street — two “tree emergencies,” two tree removals and six tree-trim requests. The spreadsheet noted all but one request was “completed,” but did not explain how.
Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) said he drives around his Southwest Side ward once every quarter accompanied by a staffer from the Bureau of Forestry.
“I literally go to the trees … that have been brought to my attention and have full inspections done at that time because that’s a real concern of mine,” Quinn said. “The tree canopy in the 13th Ward is a big deal. … And where there are dead branches that could be a liability to the city, we’re taking immediate action. I take responsibility for that.
“I’m not surprised that something like this would happen. It’s very unfortunate.”
Ten years ago, the City Council signed off on a $5.75 million settlement to compensate a 37-year-old cyclist paralyzed by a 40-foot limb that fell from a parkway tree. That tree had been inspected by the city 10 months before and was the subject of numerous demands to remove dead branches.
Since then, the city has dramatically increased its spending on tree-trimming — and reduced the backlog of tree-trimming requests — after a barrage of Council complaints.
In October 2023, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard said his crews had trimmed 53,188 trees in the prior ten months, a 172% improvement over the same period the year before.
With twice as many crews and a grid-based system to blitz specific geographic areas, Stallard told alderpersons that trees that hadn’t been trimmed in 25 or 30 years were finally getting the attention they deserved.
In a remark that turned out to be prophetic, Quinn warned of the “financial exposure” the city faces from “not taking care of the tree canopy.”
The $3.5 million payout is one of five settlements on the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the Council’s Finance Committee.