A woman seeks default judgment against East St. Louis in a suit alleging her daughter needed 28 stitches after cutting her leg on a rusty slide.
Luquesha Monique Sims, individually and as mother and next friend of D.M.N.H., her minor daughter, filed the lawsuit March 16 in St. Clair County Circuit Court against the City of East St. Louis.
According to the complaint, Sims took her daughter, who was born in 2011, to Jones Park in East St. Louis on July 5, 2019. While at the park, her daughter was playing on a slide that she claims was in a “dangerous condition that involved an unreasonable risk of harm to users of the playground equipment, primarily children, in that it was rusty and contained a hole in the slide.”
When D.M.N.H. went down the slide, Sims claims she “clipped the hole in the slide with her right thigh and had immediate bleeding and pain.” The suit states that D.M.N.H. required 28 stitches, which were performed at St. Louis Children’s Hospital the same day as the incident. Additionally, Sims claims the wound became infected, requiring further treatment at Memorial Hospital in Belleville.
Sims alleges East St. Louis knew or should have known the slide was in a dangerous condition and owed a duty to repair the slide, warn of the condition, or barricading the slide and removing it from the park.
East St. Louis is accused of failing to warn park users of the slide’s condition, failing to repair the hole, and failing to remove the slide.
Sims seeks a judgment of more than $50,000, plus costs.
She filed a motion for default judgment on June 11 through attorney David Duree of O’Fallon.
She argues the defendant was served with the complaint on April 1 and April 7 but has failed to file a response.
“Defendant is in default,” the motion states. “Plaintiffs request an order declaring the defendant to be in default on the issue of liability, with damages to be proved later.”
St. Clair County Circuit Court case number 20-L-216