William J. Brinkmann, currently Vice-Chair of the Federal Civil Practice Section, was given a Service Award for 5 years as the Section's newsletter editor. The award was given at the recent Illinois State Bar Association Meeting in St. Louis. In 2011, Bill will be the Chair of the ISBA' Federal Civil Practice Section.

David E. Krchak has contributed a chapter to the 2010 Edition of Conducting the Employment Practices Audit published by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education. Mr. Krchak’s chapter is titled Wage and Hour Issues and Child Labor Laws. The chapter explains Illinois state and federal laws regarding overtime, minimum wages and employee versus independent contractor status. The 2004 edition of the book, to which Mr. Krchak also contributed, won a national award for its contributions to continuing legal education from ACLEA, the American Continuing Legal Education Association.

The Leading Lawyers Network, a division of the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, recently recognized eight Thomas, Mamer & Haughey, LLP attorneys as members of the group. They are:

Civil litigation defense attorneys:
David A. Bailie
William J. Brinkmann
Richard R. Harden

Employment law attorney:
David E. Krchak

Workers' Compensation defense attorney:
Bruce E. Warren

Estate Planning and transactional attorneys:
Stuart M. Mamer
Lott H. Thomas
Roger E. Haughey

Membership in the Illinois Leading Lawyers Network is by nomination of a lawyer's peers, with approval from a Member Advisory Board. Membership will never exceed more than 5% of the licensed attorneys in Illinois. Membership cannot be bought. At the Leading Lawyers website, www.leadinglawyers.com, more information is available about each of their areas of experience.

Richard Harden has been inducted as a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, an honorary society whose membership, by invitation only, is given for "effectiveness and accomplishment in litigation, both at the trial and appellate levels, and superior ethical reputation."

For more information, see the group's website at trialcounsel.org.

He also has been named as an Illinois "Super Lawyer" for 2010. This follows a four-step selection by the publication Law & Politics, after polling more than 47,000 Illinois lawyers.

Represented by TM&H attorney Melissa Thomas, 162 residents and guardians of residents of Intermittent Care Facilities for the Developmentally Disabled (ICF-DDs) joined more than 2,500 other objectors in a significant Federal class action case, Ligas v. Maram (Case #05-C-4331, N.D. Ill.). At issue was a proposed consent decree which, if approved by the Court, would have fundamentally altered the services available to persons with developmental disabilities in Illinois, especially those living in ICF-DDs.

Through the proposed consent decree the plaintiffs sought to:

• Restructure the administrative process through which the State receives applications for services and assesses eligibility for available services for persons with developmental disabilities;
• Establish a process by which all persons with developmental disabilities living in ICF-DDs would be forced to submit to an intrusive annual evaluation conducted by outside persons, to determine whether they should remain in an ICF-DD or move to a community-integrated living arrangement (CILA);
• Require the ICF-DD resident to justify his or her choice should he or she choose to remain in an ICF-DD and not move to a CILA; and,
• Impose a condition that for every resident who moved from an ICF-DD to a CILA, regardless of the reason of the move, an ICF-DD bed would lose future funding on a 1:1 ratio.

These and other terms of the proposed consent decree would have had a crippling effect on ICF-DD facilities and would have left those persons with developmental disabilities living in ICF-DDs without the care on which they and their families so desperately rely.

At a July 1, 2009 Fairness Hearing in Chicago, counsel and over 240 individual objectors appeared to voice their side of the issue – that increasing the availability of the CILA option was a laudable goal, but not at the cost of denying services for those who want or require ICF-DD care. The Court rejected the proposed consent decree outright and – in recognition of the fundamental uniqueness of every person with developmental disabilities – decertified the class, putting an end to the class action suit. This was a tremendous win for ICF-DD facilities and those living in them.

For more information regarding this particular case or for information regarding the issues and laws affecting those with developmental disabilities in general, please contact Melissa Thomas.