For Immediate Release  Contact: Kevin Lampe

October 23, 2009  Phone: 312-617-7280

Jury Awards $1.5 million in Damages in Wrongful Arrest and Conspiracy Case against Chicago Police Officers

Craig Tobin Wins Case in Federal Court for Injured Traffic Aide

Today a jury found in favor of Jacqueline Fegan and awarded her $1.553 million in damages, for her wrongful arrest. With court costs and legal fees this decision could end up being more than $2 million.

Ms Fegan filed suit against defendants Robert Reid #17285, James Young #8883, Michael Drew #13167, Dennis Doherty #8222,  and the City of Chicago.

Ms. Fegan was a supervisor for the Traffic Management Authority under the City of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications. On May 18, 2006 she was arrested after she refused to rescind a parking ticket which had been issued by one of her subordinates on Officer Reid’s private vehicle. She was injured during the course of the arrest and held at the police station. No charges were filed against Ms. Fegan.

Fegan’s complaint against the police officers and the City sought damages under federal law, 42 U.S.C. 1983 for the defendant’s acts in violation of plaintiff’s rights under the Fourteenth and Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution including a federal/civil conspiracy charge.The action also sought damages under Illinois law for false arrest, false imprisonment, battery, civil conspiracy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Craig Tobin of Tobin Petkus and Muñoz represented the plaintiff in the case.  He was aided by Tomas Petkus and Karl Schook.

Tobin said, “This trial has been a long, arduous process for Ms. Fegan. With this decision Jackie has finally been given closure to this traumatic time of her life. She can never have back what was taken from her on that day in May of 2006. But with the conclusion to this trial Ms. Fegan and her family can begin to build a new life together.”

Tobin Petkus & Muñoz, L.L.C. is a nationally recognized litigation law firm whose attorneys are recognized in the National Bar Registry of Preeminent Attorneys. The firm has achieved unprecedented results on behalf of its clients.

Jury awards $1.5 million in arrest of traffic supervisor

A federal jury on Friday awarded more than $1.5 million to a supervisor in the city’s Traffic Management Authority after finding that four Chicago police officers conspired to violate her civil rights when she was arrested during a dispute over a parking ticket.

Jacqueline Fegan hunched over the plaintiff’s table in U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow’s courtroom and wept at word of the verdict. She alleged the officers permanently injured her wrist when she was handcuffed and tossed into a police squadrol on Michigan Avenue.

While on her normal patrol, Fegan had come upon the four officers in a dispute with a traffic aide. She testified that Officer Robert Reid became furious when she refused to take care of a parking ticket he had received on his personal vehicle when he responded to a police call.

After being warned about jaywalking, Fegan said she was grabbed when she walked back to her car, handcuffed and arrested.

Lawyers for the officers, who declined to comment after the verdict, argued to jurors that it was Fegan who threw her clout around and that she was arrested when she stepped into heavy traffic along the Magnificent Mile.

Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said the city was disappointed with the verdict and considering its options.

The jury awarded Fegan $1.25 million for emotional distress and more than $300,000 for medical treatment and lost wages.

Fegan’s lawyer, Craig Tobin, said his client has been through the ringer. “It’s been a long arduous fight,” he said.

– Jeff Coen

For Planning Purposes For More Information

October 9, 2009 Kevin Lampe (312) 617-7280

This Saturday, Erik Estrada Coming to Mooseheart (near Aurora, Illinois)

Moose International will present check for Safe Surfin’ Foundation at Homecoming Football Game

When: 1:30 pm

Saturday, October 10, 2009

2 p.m is Kickoff for Football Game

Where: Mooseheart’s football field

240 James J Davis Dr
Mooseheart, IL 60539

(near Highway 31 & Mooseheart Road (71))

What: Erik Estrada will receive a check from the Mooseheart in support of Safe Surfin’ just before the football game between Mooseheart and Chicago Hope

Academy.

The check is to be in excess of $135,000. Erik Estrada, motorcycle-riding star of the 1970s-’80s TV series CHiPS is a national spokesman for the Safe Surfin’

Foundation, a Bedford, VA-based organization dedicated to increasing awareness of the dangers to children of Internet predators.

Estrada is a national spokesman for the Safe Surfin’ Foundation, a Bedford, VA-based organization dedicated to increasing awareness of the dangers to children of Internet predators. Safe Surfin’, in partnership with Moose International, works to distribute educational materials and conduct training in schools and with police departments nationwide.

“This was a very localized, regionalized program and you had leadership that wanted to take it onto a larger scale,” Moose International Director of Fraternal Programs Shawn Baile said. “That’s what brought us into the conversation. Initially, we were talking about getting software into schools and to get legislation passed in various legislatures mandating education against Internet predators. Now we’re offering the opportunity for law enforcement agencies to have the same access as schools. It gives law enforcement officers a chance to train in this program.”

After the presentation “Ponch” himself will hop on a motorcycle and ride across the field opening the game. Moose Riders will bring their bikes to campus on Saturday. They will form a “chrome tunnel” through which the Ramblers will run as they enter the field for their Homecoming game led by Estrada.

Founded in 1913, Mooseheart is supported completely through private donations – the great majority of which come from the 1.1 million men and women of the Moose fraternal organization, in more than 1,800 Lodges and 1,600 Chapters located throughout the U.S. , Canada , Great Britain and Bermuda . Moose International headquarters is located on the Mooseheart campus.

Since its founding, Mooseheart has operated a complete, accredited kindergarten-through-high-school academic program, plus art, music, vocational training and interscholastic sports. It is an extremely nurturing and student-tailored program, with an average student-teacher ratio of 12-1.

For further information please contact Kevin Lampe 312 617-7280

more about ““It’s Not Even Feasible to Run When Y…“, posted with vodpod

June 16, 2009

By Casey Cora, Staff writer

Five women have filed suit against the Cook County sheriff’s department after enduring what they call degrading and dehumanizing practices that involved keeping them handcuffed and shackled during childbirth.

“It’s dehumanizing. It’s degrading. It’s demoralizing. It’s outrageous,” said Simone Jackson, a former Cook County Jail inmate and a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court Monday.

Jackson, 40, was jailed in November 2007 on a burglary charge. Three months pregnant and awaiting trial for an alleged nonviolent crime, Jackson was eligible for the sheriff’s MOM’s program, which sends 16 expecting or new inmate moms to Haymarket Center, an outside care and treatment facility.

On her due date in May, Jackson said she was transported to Stroger Hospital of Cook County free of constraints, but sheriff’s officials placed the shackles – a chain connecting an inmate’s hand to their ankle – on her left side and secured the device to her hospital bed immediately. An armed deputy stood guard while Jackson, still shackled and under nerve-numbing epidural anesthesiology, gave birth to her baby girl.

Jackson’s case may be an exception. Four other women in the lawsuit said the shackle was removed partially or entirely, but only for a few moments during delivery. All of the women said they were placed back in the shackles, even during recovery periods that lasted for days.

The process has been stopped for women transported from the Haymarket facility, but continues for patients coming from the jail’s medical ward.

Attorneys Thomas Morrissey and Kenneth Flaxman believe there are upward of 100 women who may have given birth while chained and are asking a federal judge for class-action status to include the other women in the suit.

They say the shackling process is a blatant violation of state law, which states that “under no circumstances may leg irons or shackles or waist shackles be used on any pregnant female who is in labor.”

The sheriff’s police policy allows for a deputy to unhook the leg shackles but keep the woman cuffed until the delivery – at which point the shackles are removed – but then placed back on after the delivery of the baby.–

“That means pregnant women are handcuffed (not shackled) to a bed until the point where a doctor notifies us to remove the cuffs to begin labor and/or delivery. After delivery, per the state law, the handcuffs are placed back on,” sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson said in an e-mail.

Attorneys said that interpretation of “labor” is the sheriff’s office’s “spin on their violation of the law” and said the policy was unconstitutional and might violate international treaties on torture. They said it is absurd that women in labor could be a security threat or flight risk.

“We think that’s nuts,” Flaxman said. “And we think the courts will agree with us.”

Casey Cora blogs about Oak Lawn at blogs.southtownstar.com/oaklawn and can be reached at (708) 802-8812 or ccora@southtownstar.com.

Shackled in labor: ‘Dehumanizing,’ ‘outrageous’ :: The SouthtownStar ::
News

Shared via AddThis

See CBS 2 Story here: http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=59592@wbbm.dayport.com

CHICAGO (AP) — Simone Jackson considered her seventh pregnancy a joy – until she was arrested for robbery in November 2007 and forced to deliver her child while shackled to a hospital bed.

Jackson, 40, is among four former Cook County Jail inmates suing the sheriff’s department, claiming the practice of restraining women in labor violates Illinois law and the U.S. Constitution.

Attorneys Tom Morrissey and Ken Flaxman asked a judge Monday to allow the decision in the first lawsuit to decide the fate of the rest. The class-action motion will be heard by a Cook County judge June 22.

Class action status also would allow women who have given birth at the jail since Dec. 4, 2006, to join the suit.

Jackson claims her right wrist and right ankle were chained to her hospital bed throughout childbirth.

“I thought, ‘I’m in slavery,’” she said during a news conference Monday.

Danielle Bryant, 30, said she was also shackled to her bed during labor. But, doctors demanded the shackles be removed when it was time for her to push. Five minutes after the baby was born, the shackles were returned.

Bryant, arrested for theft in August 2008, said she had heard the stories from other residents of the Mom’s Program, a Cook County program for low security-risk pregnant women. She thought the officers would remove the shackles when she began contracting.

“But they never came,” she said.

Women in the Mom’s Program are no longer shackled. But, the estimated 30 to 40 women in the general jail population still are, Morrissey said.

Sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Patterson has said deputies have followed department policy, which conforms to state law.

Jackson said following policy doesn’t make the deputies’ actions right.

“I feel they knew it was ethically wrong, but because of protocol, nobody wants to step up,” she said.

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Class Action Sought for Woman in Childbirth Shackled By Cook County Sheriff

Women Available for Interviews Today

Today, attorneys Thomas Morrissey and Kenneth Flaxman will file a motion for certification of a class action suit on behalf of pregnant women who were shackled by employees of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office during childbirth because of an official policy of the Sheriff of Cook County. The lawsuit alleges that the Sheriff’s shackling policy violates the United States Constitution and Illinois law, as well as international treaties.

Some of the women and the attorneys will be available today at 2:00 p.m. at the Morrissey Law Office 10249 S. Western Ave. Chicago

This motion follows up on individual lawsuits which were filed last week.

 

Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to Hold Fundraiser May 12 on Chicago’s Little Lady

 

For Immediate Release  Contact: Kitty Kurth

Phone: 312-617-7288

 

Paul Rusesabagina, the real life hero of the movie Hotel Rwanda, who saved 1268 people who he harbored at his hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has recently moved that headquarters of his Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF)  to Chicago. On Tuesday, May 12, HRRF is having a fundraiser on celebrate the move and to raise funds to support the Foundation’s mission of advocating for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. 

 

Rusesabagina explained, “Since the genocide in 1994, the violence has never really ended.  It has shifted across borders and slipped off the front pages, but 5 million people, many of whom are innocent women and children, have been slaughtered. The Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation is working to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the region in order to create a sustainable peace and to teach the next generation to solve problems through dialogue, not violence. 

 

The fundraiser, which is sponsored by Chicago’s First Lady Cruises, will be held from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m., and will be held on the “Chicago’s Little Lady” boat docked at the Hyatt Loading Dock on the Chicago river near the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue.  Tickets for the event are as follows: Individual Tickets – $50, Host – $250, Supporter – $500 or  Underwriter – $1000. To purchase tickets in advance, please go to the HRRF website  HYPERLINK “http://www.hrrfoundation.org“ www.hrrfoundation.org 

 

“Chicago’s First Lady Cruises is proud to welcome a great humanitarian and support his work,” said Holly Agra, president. “We host the world on our tours every season and are honored to be a part of this global effort.”

 

About Chicago’s First Lady

The fleet of Chicago’s First Lady Cruises has been the official vessels for the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise since 1993, operating more than 1,600 tours annually to the general public with commentary provided by more than 100 CAF-certified volunteer docents during its May-November season.  Chicago’s First Lady Cruises owns and operates four luxury yachts: Chicago’s First Lady, Chicago’s Little Lady, Chicago’s Fair Lady and Lady Grebe. All are available for private charter cruising each evening. As stewards of Chicago’s waterways, Chicago’s First Lady is dedicated to helping protect the environment.

 

All proceeds will support the work of the foundation. The Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation

is a 501c3 non-profit organization, and donations are deductible to the extent allowable by law.

Illinois Democratic Party stuck in the past

April 29, 2009

 

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

On an impulse, I googled “Democratic Party of Illinois” the other day.

If you need a small, dark laugh, try it yourself.

Under the first listing, ildems .com, click on “candidates.”

Lord have mercy, what picture stares back at you but Gov. Rod Blagojevich! The address listed for Blagojevich is his Ravenswood political office, which the FBI bugged last fall, yielding some of the bleeping diatribes that led to his indictment.

And there’s Pat Quinn in a photo taken about 20 years and 20 pounds ago. He’s still listed as lieutenant governor.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Secretary of State Jesse White and Comptroller Dan Hynes are there, too. Hynes’ photo looks like it came from his high school yearbook.

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, of course, was missing from the 2006 roster of candidates, thanks to Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan’s refusal to back him even though he had defeated Madigan’s handpicked candidate in the primary.

What’s stunning is that there actually have been elections since 2006. Just this month, a whole host of Democrats were running in municipal races. And Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley was fighting hard to win his way into Congress.

But you’d never know it by looking at information provided by the state Democratic Party.

The only contemporary posting is a reminder that Mike Madigan’s big spring fund-raiser is May 4 at the Island Bay Yacht Club in Springfield. Oh, and tickets are $150 a pop.

What, if anything, does this Web site tell us about the Democratic Party in Illinois?

For one thing, it tells us that while Barack Obama set a new, stratospheric standard for using the Internet to market campaigns, the state party from which he sprang hasn’t copied a single page from his book.

Is there a place on the Web site to easily volunteer to work on Democratic campaigns? No. Are there e-mail addresses? Don’t be silly. There isn’t even a button to donate to the party. Snail mail and phone numbers are the best the site has to offer.

Then again, maybe Madigan’s operation has no need for all that outreach. After all, don’t Democrats control every state constitutional office, both houses of the General Assembly, run Chicago and dominate the formerly Republican suburbs?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Still, it’s curious to see such a Dark Ages setup for the state party. That is, unless you stop looking at it as a state party and see it as, in the words of one party strategist who requested anonymity, “an overgrown caucas run by the speaker of the House, Mike Madigan, to elect people Madigan sent.”

Maybe so. In recent elections, U.S. congressional contenders such as Bill Foster (14th) and Debbie Halvorsen (11th) didn’t get much of anything in the way of help from the state party. They won anyway.

But Dan Seals in the 10th didn’t win. He had to rely on the help of unions and other organizations, not the state operation, to try to unseat incumbent, Mark Kirk.

And just ask Tammy Duckworth how much assistance she got from the state party in 2006 against Peter Roskam. None. The state GOP provided a flood of campaign literature for Roskam. Madigan’s crew was missing in action for Duckworth.

“There is no Democratic Party of Illinois,” strategist Kitty Kurth said by phone Tuesday. “When I talk to my friends at the Democratic National Committee, they say our state chair won’t return their calls.”

The Illinois Republican Party has been behind the eight ball in recent years. It has suffered from its own largely self-inflicted wounds. Then again, travel over to its Web site and there’s a discernable difference these days.

They’re using a word you might remember from another campaign.

Change.