• Reprints

Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Chicago taxpayers would pay $1.55 million to the family of a 4-year-old boy who was badly hurt when he was hit in the head by a fallen branch of a parkway tree newly trimmed by city workers, under a settlement advanced Monday by a City Council committee.

The accident that left Jaylen Raggs with a depressed skull fracture and other, lingering problems occurred on March 31, 2006 in the 9300 block of South Elizabeth.

Heavy winds caused the branch to break and fall on Jaylen’s head. The child was taken to Christ Hospital, then transferred to the University of Chicago Hospitals, where he underwent a craniotomy to reduce swelling of the brain.

He remained hospitalized for two and a half weeks, with weakness, muscle spasms and difficulty eating and swallowing. That was followed by months of physical and occupational therapy.

Nearly five years later, Jaylen still suffers from a “permanent left-foot drop that has left him with a slight limp.” His verbal abilities have suffered, and he has fallen behind in school, his experts further argue.

“Before the accident, the city’s Bureau of Forestry had been in the area of 9347 South Elizabeth on Nov. 14, 2005, and this particular tree was, in fact, trimmed,” Corporation Counsel Mara Georges told the City Council Finance Committee. “It usually is the policy [of the city] to retain a tree branch when an accident occurs due to a hit from a branch. But the branch was accidentally chipped, the particular branch that struck the child.”

Jaylen’s mother, who initially sought $15 million, filed a lawsuit accusing the city of negligently trimming the tree and failing to save the branch that fell on her son.

An expert arborist she hired examined the “parent” branch that fell on Jaylen and concluded that its condition should have put the city crew on notice that the branch was either dead or weakened.

The city’s expert disagreed.

Michael Laux, an attorney representing the Raggs family, had no immediate comment on the settlement.

Also Monday, the Finance Committee approved a $160,000 settlement to resolve a September, 2008 trip-and-fall case that resulted in a fractured elbow. Madonna Leichum, 61, tripped on a sign bolt near Huron and State.

A third settlement approved by the Finance Committee would give $300,000 to a 33-year-old woman who suffered a severely fractured leg in 2005 after a vaulted sidewalk collapsed beneath her after she got out of her car in the 5500-block of South Halsted.