Last week a jury found former Crestwood water supervisor, and current police chief, Theresa Neubauer guilty of lying about the mixing of fresh water from Lake Michigan with that of a well tainted with vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride is a known carcinogen with no safe consumption levels.

Based upon the disclosure of a letter from Burke Engineering to the Village, the plaintiffs have filed a civil conspiracy claim and a Negligence/Breach of fiduciary duty claim. “We learned for the first time, during the criminal trial, that Burke Engineering sent a letter indicating that the Village of Crestwood could refrain from reporting to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency the use of the contaminated well,” lead attorney Jay Paul Deratany of The Deratany Firm said.

Deratany goes on to explain, “We believe that this conduct amounts to a basis to allege civil conspiracy against Burke Engineering. They owed a duty of care to engage in ethical and forthright conduct in their business. To counsel the village that they had the option to “not report” the use of the well, caused injury to the plaintiffs.”

The case against the Village is currently in the discovery phase, and more information will become available throughout the summer. Concerned residents can visit The Deratany Firm’s website at www.lawinjury.com for periodic updates.

The attorneys of The Deratany Firm have over 40 combined years of experience in the areas of personal injury, medical malpractice, and adoption negligence. Attorney Jay Paul Deratany has been named one of The National Trial Lawyers Association’s Top 100 Trial Lawyers in the Nation. With settlements routinely in the millions of dollars, The Deratany Firm is committed to providing compassion and justice to those without a voice.

A downloadable pdf of this news release is also available.

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May 1, 2013

1 person killed in 3 vehicle crash in Mundelein: One person was killed in crash involving three vehicles in unincorporated Mundelein early Monday morning. Police say a white Mercedes crossed the center line and struck a minivan at Erhart and Gilmer roads. A third car swerved to avoid the accident and crashed into a tree (Source: ABC 7 Chicago). 

Remaining Charges Dropped Against Ex-Dixon Comptroller: Prosecutors on Tuesday dropped all remaining charges against a former city comptroller who recently began serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for stealing nearly $54 million from her northern Illinois community. Lee County State’s Attorney Anna Sacco-Miller dropped the 60 state counts of felony theft that remained against former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell. The prosecutor explained that the state case would have cost taxpayers more money and would not have resulted in additional prison time because any sentence would have to be concurrent with the federal punishment (Source: NBC Chicago).

Falling Concrete Smashes Car’s Hood In Streeterville: A big chunk of concrete smashed into the hood of a Chicago area family’s car as they were driving along Lake Shore Drive this week. CBS 2’s Chris Martinez reports Bill Cantrell was driving in the Streeterville neighborhood with his wife and 3-year-old son when a brick-sized chunk of concrete fell from the Lake Shore Drive overpass at Grand Avenue, and hit the hood (Source: CBS 2 Chicago).

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As the associated press reported:

From 1982 until the allegations arose in 2008, the village mixed the tainted well water with cleaner but pricier water from Lake Michigan, prosecutors said. Officials kept pumping the polluted water even after environmental officials warned in the mid-1980s that cancer-causing chemicals had oozed into the well, prosecutors have said.

And the motive? Leaders in the 11,000-resident village about 20 miles south of Chicago hoped to score political points with voters by pointing to low water rates and bragging about how they were fiscally responsible stewards, prosecutors said. By drawing the well water, they saved around $400,000 annually.

The Deratany Firm currently represents residents of Crestwood in the civil case against the village. For more information, updated periodically, visit our dedicated Crestwood page.

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Positive results for HIV have also been reported, but Oklahoma law prohibits public reporting of cases fewer than three. According to NBC News:

On March 28, investigators from the Oklahoma State Department of Health and Tulsa Health Department urged as many as 7,000 patients of the Tulsa dental clinic to be screened for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, after a patient of Harrington’s had tested positive for hepatitis C. The patient had no other risk factors for the infectious disease. Inspectors for the Oklahoma Dentistry Board called Harrington “a menace to the public health” after finding dirty instruments and improper sterilization procedures, the Associated Press reported.

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Image courtesy of Omar Omar via Flickr

The arrested included the Sacred Heart owner and CEO Edward Novak, Executive Vice President and CFO Roy Payawal, and Drs. Venkateswara Kuchipudi, Percy Conrad May Jr.,  Dr. Subir Maitra, and Dr. Shanin Moshiri.

Novak and Payawal allegedly schemed to pay bribes to the doctors, in exchange for referring patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid to Sacred Heart. They allegedly tried to conceal the bribes by masking payments as fake rental payments, by paying the salaries of the doctors’ employees, and by providing ghost contracts for the doctors.

According to prosecutors, May received 37 checks totaling $74,000; Moshiri received 38 checks totaling $86,000; and Maitra received 34 checks totaling $68,000.

Federal authorities have seized approximately $2 million in Medicare reimbursement payments the hospital allegedly received as a result of the kickback scheme (Source: CBS 2 Chicago).

Unfortunately, these actions, go against the hospital’s mission to “provide a commitment to excellence, quality healthcare and respect for our patients and the communities that we serve.”

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The suit stems from an August, 2010 attack that left the plaintiff in critical condition with over 30 stab wounds. The attacker was an 18 year-old foster teen placed in the plaintiff’s care by LCFS. The Deratany Firm argues that LCFS was negligent in placing a foster teen with a criminal history and a history of violence in the plaintiff’s care.

In the formal complaint filed with the court The Deratany Firm charges that LCFS made material misrepresentations to the plaintiff including stating that the foster teen was not violent when they knew that information was false. They also placed him in the home of the plaintiff knowing that he had a history of violence including two police assaults.

The Deratany Firm also argues that LCFS failed to provide proper social services and psychological services to the foster teen during a crisis period of time that could have minimized the harm to the plaintiff. Finally, LCFS is accused of not removing the teen from the home after being warned of his prior history of violence.

The trial which is set to begin April 22 will be lead by Deratany Firm partner Jay Paul Deratany and associate Andrea MacIver. Mr. Deratany said, “A 77 year old woman was brutally stabbed over 30 times in her home because Lutheran Child and Family Services through their grossly negligent conduct placed an 18 year old with a history of violence [even threatening to kill his own Grandmother] battery against police officers, and drug use.  This is intolerable and clearly a message needs to be sent to those agencies that this will not be tolerated.”

The attorneys of The Deratany Firm have over 40 combined years of experience in the areas of personal injury, medical malpractice, and adoption/foster care negligence. Attorney Jay Paul Deratany has been named one of The National Trial Lawyers Association’s Top 100 Trial Lawyers in the Nation. With settlements routinely in the millions of dollars, The Deratany Firm is committed to providing compassion and justice to those without a voice.

Click here for downloadable versions of our latest press releases.

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April 2, 2013

Rahm Emanuel, Garry McCarthy Address Violence: Chicago Mayor Emanuel and Police Superintendent McCarthy – appearing together at a news conference and then in separate interviews with The Associated Press – suggested that an array of police initiatives have helped reduce the number of homicides from 120 for the first three months of 2012 to 70 for the first three months of this year. Emanuel and McCarthy also fielded questions about weekend troubles in downtown Chicago, when a group of young women attacked another woman on a train and several young people – in full view of shoppers and tourists – jostled passers-by and fought each other on Michigan Avenue. More than two-dozen young people were arrested. Emanuel said police have increased their presence there, particularly at night and on the weekends, and that he did not believe what happened over the weekend would affect tourism (Source: The Huffington Post).

Maine West coach who was fired no longer fighting for job after hazing claims: A Maine West High School coach who was fired over hazing allegations has given up his fight to get his job back. Under a deal approved Monday night, former Coach Michael Divincenzo will withdraw his request for a hearing in which he was expected to fight for his job. Divincenzo also will cooperate in the defense of a lawsuit filed against the school district over the hazing allegations, and he is waiving all claims against the district (Source: ABC 7 Chicago).

United Under Pressure for Tarmac Delay: A senior trip to the Dominican Republic turned into an ordeal for about 200 students and chaperones from Lake Forest High School. The vacation was great, they said, but the trip home was nothing short of brutal. Hours of delays for United Airlines flight 545 turned into a Sunday cancellation due to a mechanical issue, the Chicago-based company said. Passengers complained of a lack of air conditioning, a lack of food, and uncomfortable delays on the tarmac. Federal Department of Transportation rules restrict tarmac delays to four hours for international flights (Source: NBC Chicago).

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Millbrook hand wrote his own petition to the high court. Millbrook claims that he was held down by one guard and forced to perform oral sex on another guard while a third prison guard stood watch. His case was thrown out by the lower courts without ruling on the merits of the allegations. Instead, the lower courts dismissed the case on grounds of sovereign immunity — the concept that the government is immune from certain kinds of lawsuits (Source: NPR).

The question that the Supreme Court took up was whether federal law waives sovereign immunity and allows lawsuits against the United States for intentional wrongful acts by prison guards acting as law enforcement officials. The government had initially argued that the court should not take Millbrook’s case.

Last Wednesday, the Supreme court accepted his appeal and appointed him a lawyer. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court Wednesday that his lawsuit can move forward. The Huffington Post reports:

The Federal Torts Claim Act waives the United States’ immunity against lawsuits for civil wrongs intentionally caused by federal representatives, including federal law enforcement officers. But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said immunity is only waived when the law enforcement officer is executing a search, seizing evidence or making an arrest.

Thomas said those terms describe what federal law enforcement officers can do, not what they can be sued for.

The exception waiving immunity from lawsuits against the government “extends to acts or omissions of law enforcement officers that arise within the scope of their employment, regardless of whether the officers are engaged in investigative or law enforcement activity, or are executing a search, seizing evidence or making an arrest,” Thomas said.

Sovereign immunity is an extremely interesting idea, but can be very confusing and is constantly being debated. In certain instances the government retains its ability to not be sued “sovereign immunity,” yet many court cases in the past century have cemented in place the ability for those wronged by the government to get compensation.

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) of 1948 permits private parties to sue the United States in Federal Court for most torts committed by persons acting on behalf of the United States. The Federal Tort Claims Act is considered a limited waiver of sovereign immunity. The FTCA states that the government is not liable for interest prior to judgement or for punitive damages.

42 USC § 1983 – “Civil action for deprivation of rights” an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1871 states, “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.” Section 1983 made compensation available to those whose constitutional rights had been violated by an actor acting under State authority. Thus, if a person’s right to due process was violated by a prison guard who was said to be acting under the authority of the state, under § 1983 that person could bring suit for monetary damages against the prison guard. Without § 1983, that person would have to seek an injunction by the courts for the due process violation. The problem with such an action by the court is that injunctions cannot apply to past harm, only future harm. So, essentially the person would have an actionable cause—the constitutional violation—with no adequate remedy.

In condensed form, 42 USC § 1983 states that an individual can sue – and in essence – put a price on civil rights and the violation of one’s civil rights; whereas the Federal Tort Claims Act states you can sue the government for a tort committed against you by a servant of the state.

Some have argued that sovereign immunity is dramatically expanding thanks to the Supreme Court. Erwin Chemerinsky argues in the Stanford Law Review that in both Alden v. Maine and Seminole Tribe v. Florida the Supreme Court expanded the scope of sovereign immunity. In Alden v. Maine Chemerinsky writes, “the Court Held that sovereign immunity broadly protects state governments from being sued in state court without their consent, even to enforce federal laws.” In Seminole Tribe v. Florida the Court, “greatly limited the ability of congress to authorize suits against state governments and to override sovereign immunity.” Chemerinsky continues to argue that the doctrine of sovereign immunity should be banished from American law. In Alden v. Maine the Supreme Court declared that Article I of the United States Constitution does not include the power of Congress to subject non-consenting States to private suits for damages in state courts. Meaning that the Court has found sovereign immunity to be a right of state governements and to operate like individual rights. He goes on to write that under the two opposing constitutional viewpoints, orginalism v. non-originalism, sovereign immunity cannot be found in either of these constitutional interpretations. Originalists believe that the Constitution should be read at face value – the Court should only find a right exists if it is expressly stated to exist in the constitution. Non-originalists believe that the Court can interpret the Constitution to protect rights that are not expressly stated or clearly intended. The text of the Constitution is silent on sovereign immunity, yet the Court routinely states that it is a right of the government (Source: Chemerinsky, “Against Sovereign Immunity” The Stanford Law Review via Duke University).

As we can see the Constitution allows for differing interpretations. Yet, thanks to two different acts those wronged by the government have the opportunity to receive compensation regardless the the sovereign immunity ideology. The Deratany Firm has been able to protect victims of police brutality, prison abuse, and other negligence caused by the government through these two acts. Hence, we are able to protect victim’s rights and make sure they are fairly compensated by those who are liable.

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CBS-DFW reports that the Helsley’s home went up in flames Friday night after a fire in their outdoor fireplace got out of control.

They called 911, but after several minutes, no fire trucks arrived.

Helsley also claimed that repeated calls didn’t help.

Part of the delayed response time might have stemmed from the Helsley’s location, which was two miles away from a closer fire station in a neighboring county, but outside its jurisdiction.

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Story courtesy of the Huffington Post

Image courtesy of Flickr