Continuance granted in condo records dispute
January 14, 2009 – At their first administrative hearing since receiving notices of a violation of city ordinance involving condo association records, attorneys for Marina Towers Condominium Association and its management company, Draper and Kramer, asked for and received a continuance. MTCA attorney Ellis Levin and Daniel Meyer, representing both the condo association and the management company, will have until March 10 to prepare arguments and cooperate with discovery. They must exchange documents and witness lists with the city’s Corporation Counsel no later than seven days before the next hearing.
The citations, issued on December 2 by the city’s Department of Consumer Services, allege MTCA and Draper & Kramer “failed to allow unit owners…to inspect the records within three days of the written request.” On December 18, 2007, a unit owner at Marina City, Mindy Verson, filed a consumer fraud complaint with the Department of Consumer Services over claims MTCA had not provided financial documents she requested the previous month. Appearing Tuesday afternoon, Levin and Meyer told Administrative Law Officer Jacqueline Stanley Lustig they have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the case file of the DCS investigation. Specifically, they want the city to give them access to an audio tape of an informal hearing on June 25, 2008. They say want to see the file “to see if anything is relevant.” Saying he’s “not inclined to let the city decide what is relevant,” Meyer told Lustig he wants to see the file for himself. But he is concerned the file may not be available, he says, as he had read news accounts that the file was lost. Marina City Online and Chicago Journal have written that Verson was told by department director Barbara Gressel that her case file was lost, possibly twice, but both accounts imply that the file was eventually found. The city’s Corporation Counsel, Vera Elue, said the respondents are on a “fishing expedition” and “just trying to shift away the conclusion [by the DCS] that a violation occurred.” She said it is not a very complicated case. “They failed to deliver documents. They failed to comply.” Levin and Meyer told Lustig they intend to show the invoices they are being asked to make available to condo owners are subject to attorney-client privilege, and not even included in the definition of “financial books and records” that a condo association must make available to unit owners. Meyer said his client faces two burdens. The applicable city ordinance and the Illinois Condominium Property Act both say that a condo association must allow unit owners to inspect its records, but on the other hand, showing those records could violate attorney-client privilege. “They are attempting to put my client in the position of choosing between the lesser of two evils.” Levin complained, also, that the invoices he is being asked to make available to Verson include details of a lawsuit Verson and six other residents filed against MTCA in 2006. The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice in October 2006. Levin and Meyer met privately with the Corporation Counsel representing the city for about an hour before the hearing. Also present was residential property manager David Gantt. Verson’s attorney, Leo G. Aubel, says an invoice for legal fees is “the last place you’d want to put privileged information.” He says the confidential information could simply be redacted (obscured or removed) from the document given to unit owners. Aubel and Verson just want to know “who was paid, on what legal matters, when and how much.”
Lustig started the hearing by pointing out she had been a neighbor and constituent of Levin’s in the 1970s. Levin represented the 12th District in the Illinois House from 1977 to 1995. She gave the city’s representative an opportunity to object to the potential conflict of interest, but the Corporation Counsel said there was no conflict.
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