Legal fee wrangling

Protect Our Parks appeals Judge Agran’s July ruling

01/20/2010 10:00 PM

By IAN FULLERTON
Contributing Reporter

1 Comment - Add Your Comment

The resident group Protect Our Parks is appealing a judge’s ruling that states they must cover their opponent’s legal bill for the latter half of a nearly two-year court battle.

That ruling favored the Latin School of Chicago, who POP charged with being partly responsible for toxic chemicals allegedly present in the turf installed on a neighboring soccer field on the south end of Lincoln Park.

Protect Our Parks’ lawsuit, filed in October 2008, made similar accusations against the Chicago Park District, who constructed the field, FieldTurf, the company that installed the turf and the City of Chicago.

POP argued that the turf could be a health risk to children, citing data from a number of toxicology and pediatric studies.

County Circuit Court Judge Martin Agran dismissed the allegations in July, and in late December told the Lincoln-park based group they owed the Latin School just under $54,000 in attorney’s fees.

“Every order that the judge entered in the case was one-sided, and it’s our position that it showed a prejudice or bias in favor of the defendant,” said Herb Caplan, a volunteer attorney for POP.

Caplan said that, in addition to reversing the sanction for legal fees, the group is fighting to bring the issue of the field’s health safety back to the table.

The appeal is another item in a long docket of legal proceedings between POP, the park district and the Latin School.

In a previous lawsuit, filed by POP in early 2008, Judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird struck down a deal between the park district and the Latin School that would have given the private school exclusive rights to the soccer field, at 1840 N. Cannon Drive, in return for $2 million in construction funding.

Citing a lack of public deliberation over the project, Kinnaird ruled that the district could not grant the school privilege over the nearly completed field. The Latin School signed a termination agreement, the park district reimbursed the school and finished the field and POP retrieved more than $40,000 in attorney’s fees.

When POP filed their second lawsuit questioning the field’s health risks, the group contested that the Latin School was still liable for any potential health risks, on the grounds that they had participated in the initial planning of the field.

“The court should not have let Latin walk away from the public nuisance it was integral in creating,” said Thomas Ramsdell, the attorney for POP.

Ramsdell maintained that the termination agreement between Latin and the park district contained no assignment of liability, thus preserving the school’s accountability for what was eventually built on the site.

The school’s attorney Bruce Meckler said the appeal was hardly intimidating.

“Latin is very confident that the court’s ruling will be fully affirmed,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Caplan said that the order to foot Latin’s legal bill did not discourage the group’s determination to continue the suit.

“The use of sanctions is very rarely applied,” said Caplan. “The fact that it was applied in our case, I think, makes our argument that we didn’t get a fair hearing that much stronger.”

The group’s appeal, filed in the Illinois Appellate Court on Tuesday, will presumably stay the sanction for attorney’s fees pending a new hearing.


1 Comment - Add Your Comment



By Joan Levin from Gold Coast
Posted: 01/21/2010 11:34 AM

This title misses the main point. While there is a dispute over legal fees, the main issue in this case concerns carrying out toxicology testing on playing surfaces to discover possible exposures to toxic substances such as lead as well as to carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. Why such resistance to this? The public, and especially parents, should be concerned.