Cook County commissioners approved roughly $48 million in legal settlements Thursday, including $7.45 million each to two men who won a record jury verdict after wrongfully spending 16 years behind bars.

John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell sued the Chicago Police Department and the county in 2020, alleging they were railroaded as teenagers and falsely confessed in 2003 to the murder and burning of Christopher Collazo. The two men won a record $60 million each in damages from a jury in March after successfully arguing they were the victims of a bogus murder investigation by police and Cook County prosecutors.

The teenagers were convicted and sentenced to 31 years in prison for the murder. Attorney Jon Loevy told reporters after the jury verdict that Fulton, then 18, spent more than 100 hours being interrogated and Mitchell, then 17, spent more than 40 hours under interrogation. He said both were coerced into false confessions that evidence didn’t support.

“While we typically do not comment on the details of legal settlements, we hope these resolutions bring some measure of peace, closure and comfort to those affected,” Nick Shields, spokesman for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, said in a statement.

The city of Chicago is on the hook for the remainder of the $120 million owed to Fulton and Mitchell, Loevy said. But the city continues to challenge the jury’s decision, a spokesman for the city Law Department said. They filed post-trial motions this spring, which are pending.

“Prior to trial, the County made the decision to settle and the City decided not to settle,” Loevy told the Tribune in an email. “The County made the far smarter decision. They resolved all liability for less than $15MM, and now the City will have to pay more than $100MM.”

Their case was one of dozens that an Injustice Watch investigation found were initially dismissed by the conviction integrity unit under then-Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. In January 2016, they reported, the unit found Fulton and Mitchell’s case for overturning their appeal had “no merit” after an investigation. A Cook County judge later vacated both convictions, and Foxx’s office then declined to prosecute the men again.

Commissioners also approved a $24.5 million medical malpractice settlement for the family of Nasir Rashawn Summerville. First filed in the summer of 2023, it alleged negligence by doctors at Cook County-run Stroger Hospital when Natasha Summerville, Nasir’s mother, went there to give birth.

After being admitted, Natasha’s “fetal monitor strips … worsened,” and a C-section was ordered for midnight March 18, according to court records. The procedure didn’t happen until March 19 at 1 a.m. When Nasir was born, he suffered hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, or brain swelling, the original suit alleges. Babies born with HIE may have neurological or developmental problems.

Staff at Stroger, the suit claimed, “failed to properly manage the second stage of labor … timely recognize fetal distress; inappropriately discontinued fetal monitoring when it was unsafe to do so; and failed to deliver baby in a timely fashion.”

The family’s attorney, Ted McNabola, told the Tribune “The Summerville family is grateful that their baby, Nasir, can receive the care and treatment he’s going to need for the rest of his life. They’re happy to put this behind them.”

Nasir, he said, is unable to feed or take care of himself or speak normally. “This injury transcends every aspect of his life and he’ll be dependent upon others for the rest of his life, tragically,” McNabola said. “The physicians are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances, and sometimes babies like this can fall through cracks in the system. It’s a system failure.”

Commissioners also approved a $4 million settlement to Shea Harrington and Shaundale Tatum, parents of Shamir Tatum. The family sued the county in 2022 over Shamir’s treatment at Stroger during summer 2020. They alleged doctors there failed to properly treat then-10-week old Tatum when he was brought into the emergency room for shaking, twitching and “preferentially gazing to the left,” according to court records.

Doctors referred him to a pediatric neurologist for an appointment a little over a week later, the suit said, but the family came back to the ER four days after their first visit with worsening symptoms. Doctors admitted him to the hospital and ordered a neurology consult and imaging. Later tests showed an infection in his brain, requiring “extensive surgical and medical interventions” to relieve the pressure and treat the infection, according to an outside physician’s evaluation submitted as part of the lawsuit.