DETROIT — For retiree Gerald Wilcox, Detroit’s bankruptcy came as a one-two punch.

The first blow took aim at his pension, which he fears is in jeopardy; the second paralyzed his malicious-prosecution lawsuit against the city of Detroit — a case that makes his blood boil.

Wilcox, a married father of three who worked two decades for the city as a bus mechanic and maintenance worker, was arrested in January and jailed for 16 days for an armed robbery he never committed. The police had the wrong Gerald Wilcox, records show, and Wilcox was cleared.

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“I want these officers to know what they did was wrong. And I want the city and everyone involved to pay financially,” said Wilcox, who vividly recalls his wife calling the precinct all night long, telling officers, “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

Wilcox, who fears justice might be out of his reach, is not alone.

According to the city of Detroit’s Law Department, the city gets hit with 600 to 700 lawsuits in any given year. But those suits now are on hold, with plaintiffs getting bad news by the day about their cases being stayed because of the bankruptcy. Now, many fear they might not see their cases resolved. Others worry they’ll just get measly settlements.

The city is urging plaintiffs to sit tight and wait.

“This is to give the city breathing room, so to speak, to settle its bankruptcy issues and to restructure without the distraction of ongoing and pending lawsuits,” said Bill Nowling, spokesman for Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr.

According to Nowling, one of Orr’s goals is to help Detroit limit the number of frivolous and nuisance lawsuits it gets hit with each year, noting the city spends about $ 20 million annually settling legal claims against it. He also noted that when the city comes out of bankruptcy, the civil lawsuits will start up where they left off.

“Everyone will have due process, and their cases will be heard,” Nowling said.

‘A slap in the face’

Attorney Julie Hurwitz doesn’t buy it.

“That is not the way it works,” said Hurwitz, who said she took a crash course in bankruptcy law that has her bracing for the worst: The lawsuits either will be discharged completely, she said, or plaintiffs will get offered “pennies on the dollar.”

“Our clients’ due process rights to their day in court have been ripped out from under them,” said Hurwitz, whose firm has four civil suits pending against the city. “The vindication of our clients’ constitutional rights are going down the toilet.”

She stressed: “There are definitely human lives that are being decimated by this travesty.”

Deborah Ryan of Canton is suing the city over the 2009 death of her daughter Patricia (Katie) Williams, a Detroit police officer who was shot and killed in a murder-suicide by her husband, who also was a police officer in the Detroit homicide unit.

“Our lives stopped that day,” said a tearful Ryan. She believes the city owes her family an apology, claiming Detroit police went out of their way to protect one of their own: the husband.

“They forgot that my daughter also was one of their own. Why didn’t they protect her?” Ryan said. “She loved the city of Detroit. And she loved her job as a police officer.”

Ryan, meanwhile, hopes to persuade the bankruptcy court to let her case proceed — an option that’s open to all plaintiffs — arguing she has suffered long enough, and so has her daughter’s now 13-year-old son.

“This is just a slap in the face to our family,” Ryan said of the lawsuit getting put on hold. “I just want to go forward. We’ve waited a long time — a long time. We just want to move on. … And I want my grandson to know I’m doing everything for his mom, and that she did not die in vain.”

In court documents, the city has denied any wrongdoing.

The city also denied showing favoritism to the husband, stating “there is no evidence” that he was treated differently “because he was a police officer. In fact, the argument is counterintuitive, given Patricia (Katie) Williams was also a Detroit police officer.”

Delay ‘is injustice’

Ryan, though, is crying injustice, as are plenty of others whose cases are now in limbo.

On Tuesday alone, for example, six police brutality cases against the city were put on hold, as was a woman’s lawsuit that claimed the city wrongfully damaged her apartment building during a demolition project.

For constitutional scholars and plaintiff lawyers, Detroit’s bankruptcy highlights an all-too-common problem in the courts: delayed justice.

“Justice delayed is injustice,” said attorney Wolfgang Mueller, who represents Wilcox and a handful of other plaintiffs suing the city for police misconduct, unlawful arrests and malicious prosecution.

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Mueller said he’s used to the city delaying lawsuits, but that the bankruptcy is just making it worse.

“The City of Detroit’s typical tactic has been to delay. … This obviously is a different animal,” Mueller said.

Then there is the Mike’s Hard Lemonade plaintiff, Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor, Mich., whose 2008 ordeal at a Detroit Tigers game landed his 7-year-old son in state custody and him being ordered out of his house.

Ratte accidentally bought his son a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at the baseball game, landing him in court. He didn’t know it contained alcohol, and the case was eventually dismissed. But it prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a state law that lets police remove kids from their parents without proving the children are in actual danger.

The bankruptcy has snagged that lawsuit, too, even though it’s not about money.

“We don’t want these important constitutional issues to be thrown out along with the city’s debts,” said Rana Elmir, deputy director of the Michigan ACLU, who is baffled by what’s going on. “Our No. 1 priority is to vindicate the constitutional rights of our clients and for policy change, so we don’t see ourselves as a creditor.”

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven Rhodes, who is overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy, appears to be taking some action to help the aggrieved civil suit plaintiffs. On Friday, he suggested that a committee be formed to handle what he expects will be a huge volume of requests from civil plaintiffs seeking relief. While all civil suits have been frozen, plaintiffs can still petition the court and ask for a continuance.

“I think the last thing any of us wants is a flood of motions,” Rhodes said, later adding, “It seems to me we ought to think about a way to manage that potential chaos.” Heather Lennox, a Jones Day attorney who is representing the city in the bankruptcy case, said the city is already working out a solution to this issue. She did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Elmir of the ACLU remains baffled that constitutional issues have been put on hold because of Detroit’s financial woes.

“It’s surprising to be lumped into the same category of creditors and banks,” Elmir said. “That’s a first for us.”

Contributing: Brent Snavely, Detroit Free Press