A potentially embarrassing lawsuit that pitted the Town of Cicero against its newly elected President Larry Dominick was dismissed Friday in Circuit Court at the urging of a lawyer hired by the town to review the case.
“I felt that the complaint was a campaign maneuver and was substantively and procedurally flawed and was not something I thought could be pursued,” attorney Paul Levy said Friday after a Circuit Court judge granted the town’s motion to drop the suit.
Filed in late January by Cicero attorneys working for then-Town President Ramiro Gonzalez, the lawsuit alleged Dominick lied about his birthday to land a police job in 1984, and that Dominick illegally co-owned a local bar while he was a high-ranking Cicero Police Department official.
Earlier this year Dominick, who narrowly won a hotly contested Feb. 22 election, brushed off the claims, saying they were an election stunt by the Gonzalez camp.
On Friday, Cicero spokesman Dan Proft called the suit “a transparent attempt by [former Chicago alderman and attorney] Ed Vrdolyak and Ramiro Gonzalez to smear Larry Dominick in the waning days of a political campaign they were losing.”
But in court filings over the summer, Dominick’s private attorney did not dispute that Dominick’s birth date was repeatedly altered in official police documents signed by Dominick.
Levy said the Cicero suit was flawed in part because the statute of limitations on the age issue had long passed. Levy said he plans his own investigation of the facts and could refile the suit.
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