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August 15, 2014

August 15, 2014, 6:50 am
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Group Continues Fight To Put Term Limits On Ballot
From the Associated Press
A group that wants to put legislative term limits on the November ballot told an Illinois appeals court Thursday that voters deserve a chance to approve a measure the General Assembly never will pass on its own.
The Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits gathered about 600,000 signatures for an initiative that would limit legislators to eight years in office, change the size of the state House and Senate and make it tougher to override a governor's veto, among other things. But a Cook County judge in June ruled the effort unconstitutional after a lawsuit was filed to try to keep the question off the ballot.
The court battle is steeped in election-year politics and could have big consequences for one of the nation's most closely watched governor's races.
"There's no question that there's politics involved in this on both sides," Timothy Eaton, a lawyer for the term limits committee, told a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 1st District Appellate Court.
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August 18, 2014

August 18, 2014, 6:51 am
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'Fort Knox' Security For Illinois Medical Marijuana
From the Associated Press
Medical marijuana in Illinois will be encased in vaults, monitored by security guards and protected by fingerprint-recognition biometrics.
It will be grown in enclosed, locked facilities. Silent alarms, 24-hour video surveillance and bulletproof glass will safeguard the retail centers where patients with special IDs will be escorted to their cars after buying pot.
That's the flinty picture painted by business owners competing for a limited number of marijuana cultivation and dispensary permits under the state's new law. A detailed security plan will give an edge in the scoring, so many of the applicants say they're exceeding the law's already-strict requirements.
You'd have to stage an 'Ocean's Eleven'-style assault and be a master safecracker to get to the product," said Erik Williams of Colorado-based Gaia Plant-Based Medicine, an operation pursuing retail sites and cultivation centers in Illinois.
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August 19, 2014

August 19, 2014, 8:08 am
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Blagojevich, State Corruption Feature In Ruling
From the Associated Press
A U.S. appeals court took on the issue of Illinois corruption under now-imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich as it revived a lawsuit alleging that racetrack owners bribed the Democrat to get him to push through legislation that cost casinos $90 million.
In reinstating the case after a lower court had thrown it out, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago agreed that four casinos could sue to recoup losses under the law that forced them to pay 3 percent of revenues to the financially ailing tracks.
Illinois' history of pay-to-play corruption, the appeals court said, looms over the dispute.
"This case requires us once again to decide whether some shenanigans in the Illinois General Assembly and governor's office crossed the line from the merely unseemly to the unlawful," the ruling from the three-judge panel says.
The answer, it said, isn't always clear-cut.
"Deals are the stuff of legislating," the 22-page ruling says. "Although (political) logrolling may appear unseemly some of the time, it is not, by itself, illegal."
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Legal Tide Turning Against Lawyers Who Profit Illegally From Class-action Lawsuits

August 19, 2014, 8:24 am
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by Lisa Rickard, US Chamber of Commerce

Former plaintiffs’ superlawyer Stanley Chesley spent his 50-year career claiming to find justice for millions of his class-action clients, and from these efforts amassed great personal wealth.

This month, justice found the Ohio lawyer.

A Kentucky judge ruled Chesley and three others liable in a $42 million judgment for a scheme to take tens of millions of dollars from settlement proceeds in a class-action lawsuit against a diet drug manufacturer.

The now-disbarred lawyer’s infractions included helping to set up a phony charity to siphon off and hide some of the settlement money from his own clients.

Chesley is by no means the first such lawyer to be punished for doing wrong. In recent years, numerous powerful lawyers have been found guilty of using the law to help themselves rather than their clients.

Among them, securities class-action lawyers Bill Lerach and his former partner Melvyn Weiss, and Mississippi lawyer Richard F. “Dickie” Scruggs, once known as the “king of torts,” all went to jail for illegalities related to their law practice.

And then there is the most recent example of Steven Donziger, the plaintiffs’ attorney who won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorean court.

In March, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Donziger “formulated and conducted a scheme to victimize a U.S. company through a pattern of racketeering” in the case, including bribing the Ecuadorean judge.

But beyond amassing (or attempting to amass) hundreds of millions — to billions — of dollars by corrupt means through litigation, their actions had another thing in common: the class-action lawsuit.

Read the entire story at the Washington Examiner.

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August 20, 2014

August 20, 2014, 6:59 am
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Illinois Residents Sue Over Prairie State Coal Plant
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Electric customers in Batavia, Ill., are suing promoters of the Prairie State Energy Campus, accusing them of misrepresenting construction and electricity costs in order to persuade the Chicago exurb to participate in the plan to build the troubled coal plant.
Nine Batavia residents are seeking class action status in their lawsuit, filed Monday in Kane County Circuit Court against the Indiana Municipal Power Agency and its CEO, Raj Rao.
The lawsuit also names a subsidiary of the Indiana Municipal Group and a Chicago consulting and engineering firm. Rao did not return a call for comment.
Delays and cost overruns have plagued the 1,600 megawatt coal plant that has since 2012 supplied electricity to public power agencies in several Midwestern states, including Missouri and Illinois. Some towns that signed on to the project say they were promised cheap coal power but are paying far more for electricity and are on the hook for a construction tab that ballooned from less than $2 billion to more than $5 billion.
The original promoter of the plant and adjacent coal mine 50 miles southeast of downtown was St. Louis-based coal miner Peabody Energy. Peabody retains a 5.06 percent interest in the campus, according to the company’s financial disclosures.
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August 21, 2014

August 21, 2014, 4:54 am
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Term Limits Plan Fails Second Test
From the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
A plan to ask voters to limit state legislators to eight years in office does not meet constitutional muster, an appeals court ruled today.
The 1st District Appellate Court unanimously held that the constitutional change championed by GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner is neither a “structural” nor “procedural” change as required by the state constitution.
In a 15-page opinion authored by Justice Maureen E. Connors, the court said the group pushing term limits “failed to adequately distinguish” the plan from a similar one rejected by the Illinois Supreme Court in the 1990s.
“We are bound by our [S]upreme [C]ourt’s holding — sparse as its reasoning was — that term limits involve ‘the eligibility or qualifications of an individual legislator,’ and so are neither structural nor procedural,” Connors wrote.
Backed by Rauner, the Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits argued that the plan’s other components — changing the size of the House and Senate and increasing the threshold number of votes to override a governor’s veto — worked in conjunction with the term limits idea to change the composition of the legislature.
The proposal, which the committee seeks to place on the November ballot, also would necessitate that members of the Senate serve four-year terms instead of staggered terms of both two and four years.
The committee argued that would be a constitutional change to the procedure of electing senators and the structure of the Senate by altering its seniority system.
But the court was not convinced by that argument, either.
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August 22, 2014

August 22, 2014, 8:01 am
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How Illinois Small Businesses Perceive The States Overall "Friendliness"
From Reboot Illinois
In Illinois, the State Government is failing to give small business any good vibes.
Small businesses are categorized by having fewer than 500 employees and comprise 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms, according to the Small Business Administration.
The “Thumbtack.com Small Business Friendliness Survey,” in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, asked more than 12,000 small business owners across the country a range of questions to determine “the perception of friendliness” in each state, noted the Chicago Tribune.
Responses from 441 Illinois respondents were used to gauge the state’s letter grade; the results paint a grim picture for Illinois small businesses and the climate they must work in.
Illinois earned an F for overall friendliness–worse than 2013?s rank of D–though this time last year the unemployment rate was hovering above 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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August 25, 2014

August 25, 2014, 6:38 am
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Debate Continues Over Success Of Health Coverage Signups In Illinois
From the Springfield State Journal-Register
The Get Covered Illinois campaign “successfully extended health coverage to over half-a-million people,” according to the state’s first annual report on the effort to carry out key parts of the Affordable Care Act.
The federal health care law “is making a real difference in the lives of Illinois residents,” Gov. Pat Quinn wrote in the report, issued by his administration last week.
Nowhere in the report, however, does it say how many of the 1.3 million uninsured Illinois adults eligible for coverage through the law were among the more than 600,000 people statewide who got coverage.
At most, it appears that efforts by the administrations of Quinn and President Barack Obama have covered one-quarter of the state’s eligible uninsured working-age adults — or more than 315,000 people — according to an analysis by the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute.
By that measure, the law “is failing to deliver” in Illinois and is unlikely to make much more progress in the second enrollment period, scheduled for Nov. 15 through Feb. 15, said Naomi Lopez Bauman, the institute’s director of health policy.
The Get Covered Illinois annual report, available at bit.ly/GCIreport, notes that more than 217,000 people enrolled in private insurance through Illinois’ federally operated health insurance exchange by the March 31 deadline.
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August 26, 2014

August 26, 2014, 6:40 am
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Chicago And 2 California Counties Sue Over Marketing Of Painkillers
From the New York Times
As the country struggles to combat the growing abuse of heroin and opioid painkillers, a new battlefield is emerging: the courts.
The City of Chicago and two California counties are challenging the drug industry’s way of doing business, contending in two separate lawsuits that “aggressive marketing” by five companies has fueled an epidemic of addiction and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in insurance claims and other health care costs.
The severity of drug abuse is well documented: Use of prescription opioids contributed to 16,651 deaths in the United States in 2010 alone, and to an estimated 100,000 deaths in the past decade. When people cannot find or afford prescription painkillers, many have increasingly turned to heroin.
The lawsuits assert that drug makers urged doctors to prescribe the drugs far beyond their traditional use to treat extreme conditions, such as acute pain after surgery or injury or cancer pain, while underplaying the high risk of addiction. Such marketing, the plaintiffs say, has contributed to widespread abuse, addiction, overdose and death.
Taking the drug makers to court recalls the tobacco liability wars of the 1990s, with government entities suing in the hope of addressing a public health problem and forcing changes from an industry they believed was in denial about the effects of its products. The tobacco settlement led to agreements by the tobacco industry to change marketing practices, which is a goal of the opioid lawsuits.
But there are differences: The $246 billion tobacco settlement involved a product that was at best lightly regulated, while narcotics are already heavily regulated by federal and state government. Still, the private law firms that have filed the opioid suits, including the public-interest firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, have encouraged governments to join their fight.
The Chicago lawsuit cites an estimate that about 1,100 emergency room visits in the city in 2009 could be attributed to opioid abuse and overdose, with the city paying $9.5 million in insurance claims for prescriptions since 2008 and much more in related health care costs.
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August 27, 2014

August 27, 2014, 6:13 am
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Man Sentenced To Five Years For Stalking DuPage County Judge
From the Chicago Sun-Times
A west suburban man has been sentenced to five years in prison for stalking a DuPage County Circuit Court judge and her family.
John Euwema, 58, was sentenced to five years in the Illinois Department of Corrections after he pleaded guilty to one Class 4 felony count of stalking and one count of interfering with the duty of a judicial officer for harassing Judge Kathryn Creswell, according to a statement from the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office.
Euwema, of the 3900 block of Central Avenue in Western Springs, mailed a package containing a book, a letter and cash to Creswell’s home on July 26, 2013, while his case was pending for a previous charge of driving with a revoked license, prosecutors said.
On Sept. 20, 2013, Euwema sent an email to the judge’s husband asking him to deliver an attached letter to the judge, prosecutors said. That same day, he surrendered himself to the DuPage County Jail to begin a 90-day sentence that Creswell had handed down two days earlier after he pleaded guilty to the charge.
Investigators from the state’s attorney’s office and the DuPage County Sheriff’s office later found ammunition, newspaper articles relating to Creswell and a photograph of one of her family members at Euwema’s place of business, prosecutors said.
“Any threatening or harassing contact with an officer of the Court will carry significant consequences, as Mr. Euwema learned today,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin said in the statement. “The fair and impartial administration of justice requires that the judiciary be allowed to perform their duties free from harassment or fear of retribution.”
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August 28, 2014

August 28, 2014, 4:41 pm
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Baxter Denies Report HQ Moving To Boston
From the Chicago Sun-Times
Baxter International Inc. is denying a media report the Deerfield-based health care products company is planning a headquarters move to the Boston area after it completes the spinoff of its biopharmaceuticals business next year.
The Boston Business Journal reported Wednesday that Baxter is seeking to relocate its corporate headquarters to a major laboratory and office complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, citing unnamed real estate sources.
“As we stated in March, when we announced plans to create two separate, independent global healthcare companies, the corporate headquarters of both companies will be located in northern Illinois,” Baxter spokeswoman Deborah Spak said in an email statement. “Given Baxter’s size and scope, as well as our many partnerships and collaborations, there are often rumors circulating. As a matter of course, we do not comment on rumors or speculation.”
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August 29, 2014

August 29, 2014, 6:40 am
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Court Rules State Retirees Can Stop Paying Health Insurance Premiums
From the Springfield State Journal-Register
State government retirees will no longer have health insurance premiums deducted from their pension benefits following a Sangamon County court ruling Thursday.
It will be months, however, before retirees will begin seeing a return of the insurance premiums they already have paid.
Judge Steven Nardulli issued a preliminary injunction Thursday that will stop the state from continuing to deduct health insurance premiums from retiree pension checks.
Chief deputy attorney general Brent Stratton said the withholdings should stop for checks going out Oct. 1 and later. Because the order will take time to implement, the changes can’t be in place by Monday, he said.
“The only reasonable expectation that we had coming into this hearing today was met,” said Don Craven, one of the attorneys representing retirees in their fight to stop the health insurance premiums. “The judge has ordered that all withholding be stopped as quickly as possible.”
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in July that state-subsidized health insurance is a protected pension benefit and the state cannot charge premiums for it. People who retired with 20 or more years of service were entitled to premium-free state health insurance.
Despite that ruling, the state continued to deduct premiums from retiree pension checks because the Supreme Court sent the lawsuit back to Sangamon County for further proceedings.
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September 2, 2014

September 2, 2014, 7:43 am
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Domination Of Illinois' Workforce Becomes Campaign Issue
From the Springfield State Journal-Register
In 1942, the first union locals of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees formed in Illinois, with a comparative handful of members working for the state. Fast forward to 2014. AFSCME now has nearly 70,000 members in Illinois — with more than 39,000 of them working for the state in the offices of the six statewide elected officials.
AFSCME is the largest state employee union, but it's far from the only one. More than a dozen unions represent state government workers, everyone from the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union to the Illinois Federation of Teachers, Fraternal Order of Police and Illinois Nurses Association.
Now, the state's heavily unionized public workforce has become a key issue in the campaign for governor.
Republican Bruce Rauner said in a November 2012 piece for the Chicago Tribune that government employee labor unions are “the most powerful political force in Illinois today, by far.”
“They have contributed mightily to our state's budgetary and economic chaos,” he wrote. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has angered unions by canceling pay raises and closing state facilities and pushing for pension reform. He was even booed by union protesters at the 2012 Illinois State Fair.
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has angered unions by canceling pay raises and closing state facilities and pushing for pension reform. He was even booed by union protesters at the 2012 Illinois State Fair.
But Quinn also has pulled in at least $4.3 million in direct contributions from organized labor groups, who say they remain worried about Rauner, even though he has softened his statements about public worker unions since winning the GOP primary.
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September 3, 2014

September 3, 2014, 7:44 am
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Panel Rules Brookfield Zoo Not Immune From PI Suits
From the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
The 1st District Appellate Court has reversed the dismissal of a personal-injury suit against Brookfield Zoo after ruling the circuit court improperly recognized the zoo as a local government entity.
Since 1934, the zoo has been operated on land owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. It’s controlled and maintained by the private, nonprofit Chicago Zoological Society under an agreement signed in 1986.
Kristine O’Toole filed a negligence complaint in July 2012 after she tripped on a zoo walkway and fractured one of her wrists in August 2010.
The zoo, citing the Tort Immunity Act, contended O’Toole’s complaint was filed past the one-year statute of limitations applied to local public entities. As a nonprofit that benefits the entire community on public land, the zoo argued it conducts public business.
In a 17-page opinion written by Justice Terrence J. Lavin, the panel ruled nonprofit status does not necessarily mean an organization is a local public entity. Further, Lavin ruled that the complaint was timely filed.
“In addition, while many private endeavors improve or affect the public interest, that alone will not render a private enterprise a public business,” Lavin wrote.
Under existing case law, public business is understood to refer to the government’s business, Lavin wrote. And a corporation is not conducting public business unless there is evidence it is controlled by the local government and subject to the same ordinances and regulations as governmental bodies.
The panel agreed with O’Toole that the zoo has not shown it participates in public business.
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September 4, 2014

September 4, 2014, 6:07 am
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Chief Judge In McLean County Retiring
From WMBD-TV
McLean County Chief Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Robb announced her retirement at the end of the year. Robb, who has served on the bench for 22 years, the last ten as chief judge, will retire December 31st.
In her retirement letter, Judge Robb said she was grateful for the opportunity to become a judge, a goal she had since high school. Judge Robb was the first woman to serve as an associate judge, circuit judge and chief judge in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit which includes Ford, Livingston, Logan , McLean and Woodford Counties.
She was appointed to the bench in 1993 after eleven years in private law practice including five years as an assistant public defender in juvenile court.
Judge Robb is credited with establishing the drug court, small claims mediation program in 2008 and the mortgage foreclosure mediation program in 2012. Judge Robb was also instrumental in developing CASA program that trained citizen volunteers to advocate for children who were somehow enmeshed in the court system.
Judge Robb is a 1978 graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.
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September 5, 2014

September 5, 2014, 7:10 am
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Judge: Insurance Ruling Will Factor Into Pension Reform Decision
From the Springfield State Journal-Register
A Sangamon County judge said Thursday that a recent Illinois Supreme Court decision on state retiree health insurance is a factor in the lawsuits filed to overturn pension reform.
Circuit Judge John Belz also said the pension reform cases “should be done this year” at the circuit court level, a speedier schedule than lawyers laid out prior to the Supreme Court decision.
“The faster we can move this along within reason, the better,” Belz said during a status hearing Thursday.
The next hearing is now scheduled for Oct. 8, when lawyers for state government retirees will argue the Supreme Court decision in the health insurance case means the pension reform law should be overturned.
“Today’s hearing was very encouraging for the (retirees),” said John Fitzgerald, one of the lawyers representing retirees in the multiple lawsuits filed to stop the pension reforms that were signed into law last year.
The Supreme Court said in a July ruling that state-subsidized health insurance for retirees is a benefit protected by the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution. It meant the state cannot charge premiums to retirees for their health insurance. The case is usually referred to as the Kanerva case, after one of the plaintiffs.
Lawyers for retirees in the pension reform lawsuit believe the decision nullifies the state’s argument in the pension lawsuit.
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September 8, 2014

September 8, 2014, 6:29 am
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Illinois Pension Debt Rate Nation’s Worst, Moody's Report Says
From the Associated Press
Illinois’ pension liability as a percentage of state revenue is far and away the nation’s highest, according to a new report from a major credit-rating agency.
The state’s three-year average liability over revenue is 258 percent, Moody’s Investors Service says.
The next closest? Connecticut, at about 200 percent.
The Moody’s report averaged the Illinois percentage from 2010 through 2012. In 2012 alone, the state’s rate was 318 percent.
The state has a $100 billion deficit in the amount of money that should be invested in the portfolios of five state-employee pension accounts. Lawmakers adopted an overhaul plan last fall that cuts benefits and increases worker contributions to significantly cut that debt.
But the law has been challenged in court. A Sangamon County judge indicated last week he wants the case moved swiftly to appellate courts, suggesting the Illinois Supreme Court’s rejection in July of a law affecting retiree health insurance could prove a model for the pension challenge.
Moody’s points out that even if the pension overhaul gets constitutional approval from the state’s high court, it still will take decades for Illinois government to dig out of its financial hole.
Moody’s first released a state-by-state ranking of “adjusted net pension liability” in June 2013, when it put the Illinois rate at 241 percent. The latest report, focusing just on Illinois, doesn’t give specific percentages for those trailing the state, but Moody’s said 15 months ago that Connecticut was at 190 percent and Kentucky at 141 percent.
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September 9, 2014

September 9, 2014, 6:44 am
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Illinois Employers To Lay Off More Than 2,000 Employees In Coming Months
From the Chicago Tribune
Illinois employers warned they will lay off more than 2,000 employees in the coming months, according to notices filed with state regulators.
Twinkie maker Hostess said it will lay off 418 people from its plant in Schiller Park, which it is closing. Layoffs there begin on Oct. 19.
For-profit education company Career Education Corp. is laying off more than 740 employees in Schaumburg and Downers Grove due to a relocation. The company, which has been battling a decline in student enrollment, said it lease in Downers Grove is expiring and it making more efficient use of its office space in the suburbs.
Mark Spencer, Career Education spokesman, said all but one employee are being offered jobs at other offices.
Deere & Co. officially announced its 425 planned layoffs in East Moline. The company, which announced the layoffs last month, has said it is scaling back production to account for lower demand for its agricultural equipment.
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September 10, 2014

September 10, 2014, 6:07 am
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Napoli Leaders Talk About Past Mistakes, Future Plans For New York Firm’s Madison County Asbestos Lung Cancer Cases
From the Madison County Record
Just two years after opening an office in Madison County, leaders with New-York based Napoli, Bern, Ripka, Shkolnik are acknowledging their law firm has developed a bad reputation for the number of asbestos lung cancer cases it has filed.
“We continue to hear the almost panic in some people’s voices over the lung cancer docket,” said Patrick Haines, who manages the firm’s Edwardsville office.
Haines on Friday joined his colleagues– Marc Bern, a senior partner in New York; Ethan Horn, a partner in California; and Brad Smith, a partner who heads the firm’s bankruptcy trust team in Texas –to express their intentions to change the firm’s reputation.
The firm leaders held a meeting with local asbestos attorneys to discuss their future litigation plans, as well as some of the mistakes made, particularly with the firm’s initial approach to filing asbestos lung cancer cases.
“We are committed to bringing the practice to a manageable and a realistic level,” Bern said.
Napoli opened an office in Madison County in 2012. Just one year later, the firm dominated the docket, representing roughly 32 percent of the new case filings. Of those 525 cases, more than 90 percent of those cases were lung cancer claims.
Haines agreed his firm files a larger number of lung cancer cases than other asbestos plaintiffs’ firms, but explained that it had obtained an influx of lung cancer cases all at once a few years ago that resulted in mass lung cancer filings last year.
Since then, the Napoli firm has been steadily rejecting and selecting which claims it will represent, Haines said, noting the initial wave of work is complete and should allow for a drop in filing rates.
“We chewed through that work that was all there in one chunk,” he said.
The firm admitted that it erred in its initial filing practices.
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September 11, 2014

September 11, 2014, 8:12 am
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McGlynn And Rudolf Vying For Seat Once Held By Drug-addicted Judge; Fund-raising So Far Not Close To What Cook Raised During Uncontested Race
From the Madison County Record
When Michael Cook ran unopposed for St. Clair County resident circuit judge in 2010, more than $140,000 was raised on his behalf and for fellow Democratic nominee for circuit judge Bob Haida who also was unopposed.
Those funds were raised within two months during the spring, and by comparison far exceed the amount of money raised so far this election cycle on behalf of judges seeking to succeed Cook.
Except for $250 of the $146,740.81 the Haida/Cook for Judge committee raised in May and June 2010, the total was split about three ways between the Committee to Elect Mike Cook, the Committee to Elect Bob Haida and the St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee.
Haida, former state’s attorney, is now completing his fourth year of a six-year term as judge. Cook would be too, except, perhaps, for his conviction on heroin possession and weapons charges. After his arrest in May 2013, Cook pleaded guilty and was sentenced earlier this year to two years in federal prison.
The vacancy created by Cook’s departure is now up for grabs in November.
This time, though, voters have options – Stephen McGlynn, a Republican, and Heinz Rudolf, a Democrat.
Both are sitting judges. McGlynn was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created after Cook’s shameful departure from the court.
Rudolf was appointed by elected circuit judges of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in 2007, and reappointed to the position in 2011.
Rudolf has a clear fund-raising edge over McGlynn. To date, Rudolf has raised approximately $23,000 in individual contributions and loaned his committee $30,000, funds which may be funding Rudolf’s recently unveiled TV campaign.
His biggest contributions came from Belleville attorney Rhonda Fiss and the Belleville firm Becker Hoerner Thompson at $5,000 apiece. The Driscoll Law firm of St. Louis, which regularly files product liability suits on behalf of consumers from across the country in St. Clair County, contributed $2,500. O’Gara and Gomric of Belleville gave $1,250.
Others who gave $1,000 were Edwardsville asbestos firm Gori and Julian, Kuehn Law of Belleville, Keefe and Keeve of Swansea, Committee to Elect Bob Haida, as well as others.
In the meantime, McGlynn has raised about $13,000 in individual contributions.
His biggest contribution, $5,000, came from Equity Capital Corp. of O’Fallon. Candidate McGlynn also received $2,500 contributions from his father Robert McGlynn of Belleville and Kathleen Cook, president of Village Bank of St. Libory. He received a $300 contribution from O’Fallon attorney David Duree.
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