Families Sue Toll Authority

What is the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority's responsibility for maintaining appropriate median barriers?

That is the key question authority officials will face at a May 16 hearing in DuPage County Court. A lawsuit alleges that the toll authority caused the wrongful deaths of three McHenry County men in a 2004 wreck on Interstate 90 near Randall Road.

Close friends in their early 20s, Mark Neukirch of Huntley, and Mat Kugelman and Matt Dombrow of Crystal Lake, were killed Feb. 21, 2004, when a vehicle driven by Hugo Escobar-Florian crossed the formerly open, grassy median of I-90 just west of Randall Road and struck Neukirch's car head-on.

Now the three families have filed a wrongful-death civil lawsuit against the toll authority, which is based in DuPage County, through lawyers Bob Walsh and Craig Squillace of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago. The lawsuit alleges that tollway officials failed to protect drivers from injury by not designing and installing an adequate system of curbing and guardrails.

"The barriers, if they were placed there before, would've saved these kids' lives," Squillace said.

"The barriers being there now will save lives in the future," Squillace said.

Cement barriers do not extend west of Randall Road. But last summer, the Toll Authority installed wire-rope dividers west of Randall Road out to the Hampshire area – an addition that the tollway said was long in the works.

Joelle McGinnis, tollway spokeswoman, declined to comment on the suit, which was filed Feb. 16 and seeks a minimum of $50,000 in damages. The families, who have lobbied for a safer tollway, deferred comment to Squillace on his instructions.

The suit also accuses the toll authority of violating the Toll Highway Act by not providing a highway system that incorporated "the benefits of advanced engineering skill, design, experience, and safety."

Squillace said he was not aware of anyone ever suing the toll authority because of inadequate medians, besides another lawsuit he is handling.

That suit was filed in December by Barbara Rommel, the Huntley widow of Timothy Rommel, who was killed January 2005 when a vehicle crossed I-90's grassy median and landed on top of Timothy Rommel's vehicle in oncoming traffic. The wreck was about 2 miles from the site of the fatal Neukirch crash.

About 65 percent of the fatal accidents on I-90 from 2001 to 2003 happened west of Randall Road, according to a Northwest Herald analysis of toll authority records. Since 2003, at least 11 people have died on the stretch of I-90 between the Elgin Toll Plaza and the Hampshire area.

Reprinted with permission from The Northwest Herald