HUNTLEY – The liability problems just keep piling up for Simon Properties at the Huntley Outlet Center.
Previous reports by the Sun Day, describing maintenance and safety problems and one previous injury at the facility have generated information about a second injury incident suffered there by a Sun Citian. This one indicates that maintenance problems were present more than five years ago. It also led to a formal lawsuit filed by a Sun City attorney and a court-ordered financial settlement.
Since the Sun Day published its first article in the fall of 2014 about conditions at the beleaguered mall, the newspaper has received information about two injury incidents that occurred in 2010 and 2014. The incidents sent severely injured shoppers to area hospitals by ambulance and included extensive medical treatments and therapies.
A compensation claim by Sun Citian Rosa Maggi in August, 2014, is pending the results of negotiations between Mike Mulligan of Rosemont, her attorney, and representatives of Simon Property Group, owner of the mall. An “unacceptable” settlement offer has been made by Simon, according to Mulligan, but has been rejected.
The most recent report involves Eleanor Leitner (N-12), who caught her foot in a pavement defect on a sidewalk outside the mall’s food court on Mar. 9, 2010. She fell to the pavement, striking her right elbow. In the next four months, she incurred thousands of dollars of medical expenses for two surgeries to repair two fractures in her arm and months of physical therapy. Leitner and a friend were leaving a bingo party in the mall’s food court when her injury occurred.
“They used to have popular bingo days once a month in the food court, and I used to go there often for those, and in a few cases I shopped there,” Leitner said recently. “They don’t have them anymore and not much goes on there anymore. For four months, my arm was immobilized, and I could barely sign checks and write. I was worried that I couldn’t repay Medicare. It took more than three years, but it finally turned out okay. All I wanted from the lawsuit was to get enough money to reimburse Medicare. My use of my right arm is diminished and limited.”
Her attorney, Daniel Burke of Sun City, earlier rejected what he called a “paltry” initial settlement offer from Simon.
In court records obtained by the Sun Day, the defendants were identified as Simon Property Group, Lightstone Group, Prime Retail Inc., and Huntley Factory Shops, Ltd. Burke charged that the defendants “acted or failed to act by temporarily filling a void and replacing a defect area with sand, allowing the defect to exist with a sub-base of sand, failing to ‘mark off’ the defect area to alert business patrons, failing to ‘block off’ the defect area so patrons would not come in contact with the defect, failing to timely repair the defect, and failing to have in place an inspection routine.”
The Leitner lawsuit was filed in 2010 and concluded in late 2013 in Kane County Circuit Court in St. Charles. Burke and Leitner declined to divulge the amount of the court-ordered settlement.
In the past several months, the Sun Day has observed deteriorating conditions at the mall, including uneven sections of sidewalks, potholes and bumpy conditions in the parking lots, and some signage that is out of date. About 60% of the store spaces are vacant, and Huntley village officials, shoppers, and Sun City residents have complained about the unsafe conditions and gloomy appearance of the mall.
A large sign directing residents onto Freeman Road off Route 47 to access the mall has recently been replaced after it was taken down during the recent construction of the I-90 Tollway interchange on nearby Route 47. Additional barricades and signs have been placed on sidewalks warning visitors of defects.
Calls and emails to Simon Property Group were not returned in connection with this report.
