A funny thing happened on the way to Eviction Court!

I decided to take the Pedway, underground pedestrian walkway, in the “Loop,” to avoid the raindrops, making my way from what used to be, and to real Chicagoans still is, Marshall Field, regrettably, now known as “Macy's”, toward Daley Center, the County of Cook courthouse. I need to quench my thirst with the usual Earl Grey, Vente, with plenty of room, Lemon splash, and lots of that raw sugar in the brown packaging, and with three honeys on the side “which has nothing to do with my love life...”, as I tell the joke for the umpteenth time to the slightly bemused Barista [with my wife's permission] and proceed through the side door to sit for a while in the limited seating just to the west of the well-known coffee restaurant's fenced-in area.

Scanning the area for any familiar face, from recently or back in the day... among the hordes of arriving office holders or seekers or contestants in all manner of legal issues, from traffic tickets to Million Dollar lawsuits, and seekers of every manner of document, from birth certificates, to building permits, to death certificates, because the County Clerk's Office is down the hall to the South connecting concourse with the County Building across Washington St., which street name should, but does not yet commemorate, redoubtably the best Mayor of Chicago, ever.

That's when it catches my eye...A Collage in a glass display stretching down the hallway toward the west end of Daley Center and on up into City Hall. It's a periodic fixture in the concourse which has, in the past, even featured a full page ad from Ebony taken out by Rexall featuring my sainted Father and now recovering-from-a-heart-attack just older brother, both named “Silas J...” and both holding Mortars and pestles, dressed in Lab Coats, and touting the fact of their acquisition of their second Rexall Drug Store when Black ownership of same was a rarity, as they were “Firsts,” given Rexall Drug Company's propensity for Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, in prior Advertisements, in publications other than Ebony and Jet. My Brother, Silas, Freeman and Charles, though not my Father, are Chicago products. My Father, a force to be reckoned with, was from Pine Bluff Arkansas, where HIS father was a force to be reckoned with...

The walk from as close as Michigan Ave to Dearborn St has, recently, been an exhausting necessity, in lieu of a cab, rather than the jaunt it used to be when I was younger than 73 and I worked in the “Hall.”

That walk has taken me through the Field's building, where once I trained to work and then was transferred to the coveted job in their now converted from Men's Store to Office and Residential Suites building, in the Men's Furnishing's department, I was able to sell the universes' most expensive sweaters. Similarly priced suits were available, in the other department, on the same floor.

Then through the Red Line Station, under what is now known as “Block 37,” but once, on the Randolph-Dearborn corner, near the United Artist's Theater, was The Pilgrim Donut Shop, where I used to stop, have a donut and a cup of coffee while viewing its iconic Art portraying a Thin man with one donut with a thin periphery and a huge hole next to a fat man with a similar donut though with a fat periphery and a tiny hole...and the advice...

THE OPTIMIST'S CREED

“As you travel on through Life, Brother,

Let One thing be your Goal...

Keep your eye upon the donut,

and not upon the hole...”

There is no historical plaque for that.

There is also no plaque for the historical remembrance of the fact that the building next door to The Pilgrim Donut Shop once housed the headquarters of the successful Mayoral Primary Campaign of U.S. Congressman Harold Washington of Illinois' 1stCongressional District, in 1982-83, in which I played a role. That building, long demolished, 127 North Dearborn, housed, on it's 7thFloor, Washington's HQ, which was exactly three floors beneath the campaign headquarters of Richard M Daley, then Cook County State's Attorney, on the 10thFloor, where core operations of both campaigns were conducted, even Finance Committee Meetings. The seventh floor offices of Washington were within eyeshot, and at the same height as Daley's State's Attorney's Office, [we noted the fact at the time] and directly across Dearborn Street while both vied for the Democratic Nomination for Mayor of the City of Chicago. We won that one. Thanks, Optimist's Creed.

I have a few minutes to enjoy the tea before going upstairs to remove my belt and have my pockets checked for contraband [could be anything from a camera, though the Sheriff's Deputies, curiously, allow any kind of smartphones ...WITH cameras...to a bludgeoning Axe, I suppose, or the steel flashlight and screw driver with which I always manage to get caught and required to forfeit the item or be late for or absent from court unless I leave the item at home. ]

“Home...,” well that's becoming a misnomer, as my wife and I have discovered

the as-yet-undisclosed-by-management “3000 spores of Aspergillus/Penicillin per cubic meter” after first hearing, in December 2018, of a fire in our unit, in 2014, after living with the stuff since June of 2017...

We “live,” barely surviving, in what is called, by the National Institutes of Health, which denotes any building where the sprinkler systems fail to reset after a fire on the eighth floor causes all floors below to maintain standing water of 3 inches or more, a WDB or Water Damaged Building,

Our apartment, in early 2014, 6 months before we moved into the building was the exact site of that fire, a fact of which we never disclosed until December 2018, or 18 months after occupancy, and not officially, by the “management” but by a chance encounter with a

On the subject of a WDBs or Water Damaged Buildings and Mold exposure, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, NIH, in 2013, wrote in a study abstract:

“Over the past 20 years, exposure to mycotoxin producing mold has been recognized as a significant health risk. Scientific literature has demonstrated mycotoxins as possible causes of human disease in water-damaged buildings (WDB). This study was conducted to determine if selected mycotoxins could be identified in human urine from patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Patients (n = 112) with a prior diagnosis of CFS were evaluated for mold exposure and the presence of mycotoxins in their urine. Urine was tested for aflatoxins (AT), ochratoxin A (OTA) and macrocyclic trichothecenes (MT) using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISA). Urine specimens from 104 of 112 patients (93%) were positive for at least one mycotoxin (one in the equivocal range). Almost 30% of the cases had more than one mycotoxin present. OTA was the most prevalent mycotoxin detected (83%) with MT as the next most common (44%). Exposure histories indicated current and/or past exposure to WDB in over 90% of cases. Environmental testing was performed in the WDB from a subset of these patients. This testing revealed the presence of potentially mycotoxin producing mold species and mycotoxins in the environment of the WDB. Prior testing in a healthy control population with no history of exposure to a WDB or moldy environment (n = 55) by the same laboratory, utilizing the same methods, revealed no positive cases at the limits of detection.”

Yet my attorney was not capable of sustaining a count in the case, regarding the premises liability tort, where the opposing Landlord's Attorney also had the following to say about a recent development in procedure in the Cook County Court's Civil Division Eviction Trials: Actual Audio Recording of Eviction cases:

“Daley Center Evictions to be Audio-Recorded

Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - 8:51am 

Starting on June 10, 2019, eviction proceedings at the Daley Center in Chicago will be audio-recorded. Audio-recording has been a long-standing request by local legal aid agencies, as they believe it will help them prepare motions and appeals to overturn landlords' judgments against tenants. As the leader in landlord-tenant litigation, trials, and appeals, we welcome this development. However, landlords need to understand how this affects their business.

Many times, a tenant will say or do one thing in court, lose, and then tell a tenant-side attorney something completely different outside of court. The tenant's attorney, relying on the tenant's faulty version of events, will then file unnecessary motions or an appeal because there was no record of what the tenant actually said or did in court. Because there will now be a record to contradict what the tenant later tries to tell an attorney, we believe audio-recorded proceedings will have the effect of dissuading frivolous tenant litigation and protecting landlords, attorneys, and judges from baseless claims.

However, we also anticipate this development will have the effect of increasing litigation by tenants' lawyers who hope there's enough in the record to prevent a landlord from regaining possession of its property based on a simple technicality. Increased litigation means increased expenses for landlords and the necessity to mitigate the potential risk of an adverse ruling. Where there is the potential for increased expenses and the necessity to mitigate potential risk, the requirement that landlords have an experienced attorney on their side is even greater. 

The attorneys at Xxxxxxx Xxxx, LLP are leaders in representing landlords on contested motions, trials, and appeals. We have a proven track record in winning cases, and we welcome inquiries from landlords and property management companies to determine how this development affects your business. “

...Or, as I like to put it, “The thoughts that Dickens might have put in Scrooge's brain, before that night of dreams...”