Former Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard
CHICAGO — A cash-strapped south suburban Chicago village plagued for years by political scandal and financial and administrative mismanagement must now find a way to pay more than $33.5 million to the families of two men, including one who was killed, in a crash that ended a high-speed police chase.
On Feb. 20, Cook County Circuit Judge William B. Sullivan issued an order enforcing a jury verdict, declaring the village of Dolton "has no higher duty than to pay" the amount to the families of John Christopher Kyles and Duane Dunlap.
In the order, the judge further directed Dolton village officials to come up with a plan by April 20 to pay the sum, whether that means borrowing the money or raising taxes or fees on village residents and businesses.
The ruling comes a little over two years since attorneys for the families of Kyles and Dunlap filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against the village of Dolton, seeking just such an order.
Kyles was killed and Dunlap severely injured in 2016 when a vehicle in which they were passengers crashed after it was pursued in a high-speed chase involving Dolton Police. The driver of the vehicle was identified as Demetrius Sorrels, who triggered the police chase when he allegedly skidded through a stop sign in Dolton.
Sorrels was charged with reckless homicide, and was sued by Kyle's and Dunlap's families, along with the village of Dolton.
In August 2022, a Cook County jury ordered the village of Dolton to pay the families $33.5 million.
An appeals court rejected the village's appeal in 2024.
While the verdict was appealed, the families of Kyles and Dunlap have pursued enforcement of the verdict, noting the village never filed any motion to pause the verdict demands while the appeal played out.
In January 2024, the families and their attorneys filed suit to secure an order known as a writ of mandamus, to force the village to pay the families the $33.5 million verdict, plus $2 million per year in interest for each year in which the verdict has remained unpaid.
The lawyers said the unusual legal action was prompted out of concern that Dolton village officials would attempt to use long-running dysfunction within the village government to ignore the verdict for as long as possible.
The lawsuit came at the heart of political scandals involving former Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard.
For years, Henyard was the target of complaints of misgovernance and mismanagement and accusations of public corruption and lawlessness in both Dolton and Thornton Township.
Other village officials in Dolton accused Henyard, for instance, of misusing village police for her own personal security, and of violating state law for refusing to fulfill lawful public information requests allegedly to hide alleged misdeeds and corruption.
Members of the Dolton village board of trustees accused Henyard of financial mismanagement, asserting she regularly racked up charges of tens of thousands of dollars per month on a village credit card, with little explanation for the charges.
Former and current village employees accused Henyard of punishing and even firing them for refusing to go along with allegedly illegal schemes.
The former Dolton police chief claimed in court that Henyard fired him because his wife was friendly with Henyard's political opponents.
After years of political and personal clashes amid the accusations of corruption and mismanagement, Henyard was removed from office by voters in 2025 in a landslide vote in favor of her chief opponent, then-village trustee Jason House.
In the 2024 lawsuit, attorneys for the families asserted the court needed to step in to ensure the verdict was paid "amid a complete breakdown of the Village of Dolton's accounting internal controls, and checks and balances," leading to governmental insolvency in the village.
The plaintiffs noted their demands could include a court order directing the village to raise taxes to cover the sum.
After more than two years of court proceedings over those questions, Judge Sullivan granted such an order.
The families have been represented by attorneys from the firm of Loevy & Loevy, and attorney Dan Stohr, all of Chicago.
The Loevy firm and Stohr have largely built their practices on representing people who claim they were mistreated or harmed by police, or wrongfully prosecuted, and then file lawsuits regularly worth millions of dollars against cities and villages in Chicago and surrounding communities, to be paid by taxpayers.
