River North bar says woman was mostly responsible for sex assault

An attorney for a River North bar is arguing that a woman who was sexually assaulted in the bar’s alley “was more than 50 percent of the proximate cause of the injury.”

Because the woman was mostly responsible for her own attack, the attorney said, she is “barred from recovering damages.”

The affirmative defense was filed in Cook County Circuit Court last week by James Hoey, a lawyer representing El Hefe, a bar on Hubbard Street in River North.

A lawsuit was filed against El Hefe in November by the woman — identified only as Jane Doe — who alleged that she might have been drugged while she was at the establishment with a friend in October.

After a short time at the bar, she was escorted out the back door and into the alley, where she was sexually assaulted by a man who had bought her drinks inside. Two El Hefe employees can be seen on security video standing less than 100 feet away as the attack occurs, according to the woman’s attorneys.

El Hefe’s lawyer argues that the woman “became overly intoxicated” to the point of vomiting inside and left the company of her friend. She also “failed to take adequate and proper steps necessary to protect her own safety while at the subject establishment,” the defense states.

John Chwarzynski, one of the woman’s attorneys, said El Hefe’s defense was “disingenuous but it is also the equivalent of victim blaming.”

“The staff at El Hefe put my client in that position, sent her out the back alley, and facilitated an assault,” Chwarzynski said in a statement. “Rather than protecting my client, they placed her in a dangerous situation, and now El Hefe wants to shift the blame and claim that my client should have protected herself. It is horrific and disheartening.”

El Hefe’s lawyer also claimed the bar “has no duty to protect others, including Jane Doe Plaintiff, from criminal acts by third parties on their property” or “outside of its establishment.”

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 10.

Meanwhile, El Hefe faces a second lawsuit from another woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted after someone in the bar drugged her drink. She went on to claim the bar’s staff was complicit in her attack.