The Town of Cicero was slapped with a $9 million federal harassment lawsuit Monday by two former officials who also sued their own one-time lawyer, saying he sold them out to political enemies.
Former Town Collector Alison Resnick and former town spokesman Ray Hanania were involved in political purges carried out in recent years by controversial Town President Betty Loren-Maltese.
In their suit, Resnick and Hanania, who are married, alleged that they were stripped of power by Loren-Maltese and her allies for trying to blow the whistle on corruption in the western suburb. A federal probe of such corruption charges is under way.
Loren-Maltese, in a statement, dismissed the Resnick-Hanania suit as “baseless and frivolous.”
More surprising, though, are the legal malpractice charges leveled by the couple against Jerome Torshen, who represented Resnick in an earlier lawsuit filed against Loren-Maltese.
That action was filed last year when Resnick was filling out the last months of her term. The 1997 suit accused Loren-Maltese of wrongfully firing Resnick’s employees and removing responsibilities from her office.
The suit was settled out of court last August. But the settlement included an unorthodox clause in which the town agreed to hire Torshen’s law firm to represent it in an unrelated case. That case eventually netted the firm more than $41,000 in fees.
The arrangement amounted to a “conflict of interest” for Torshen that effectively compromised his actions on behalf of his client, Resnick and Hanania charged.
Resnick eventually was fired by the Town Board before the expiration of her term, with board members saying she had violated her responsibilities by skipping their meetings. Resnick alleged that she did so on the advice of Torshen.
Torshen insisted that he vigorously represented Resnick and dismissed the couple as “whining ingrates.” Torshen said he only agreed to take the new case for Cicero to defray the expenses of representing the couple after they complained that they couldn’t afford escalating legal bills.
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Legal experts said the settlement arrangement is extremely unusual.
“I have never heard of a situation in a settlement agreement like that before,” said James Grogan, general counsel at the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. Grogan declined to comment on whether the arrangement is proper because the panel has never reviewed such an agreement.