Citing repeated misconduct by an attorney, a federal judge took the rare step Friday of throwing out a jury verdict in favor of a woman who alleged an off-duty Chicago police officer attacked her during a road-rage incident on the Stevenson Expressway nearly nine years ago.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis blasted attorney Dana Kurtz, saying she engaged in a “pervasive” pattern of misconduct at trial — making repeated misrepresentations to the court, asking questions to deliberately elicit barred testimony and improperly coaching witnesses. The judge also concluded Kurtz had given documents to the Chicago Tribune during the trial in an effort to improperly influence the jury.
“While it is possible that each individual incident, standing alone, should rightly be given the benefit of the doubt and would not merit a severe sanction, the continuous, repetitive nature of the misconduct, the fact that she did not improve her conduct in the face of numerous warnings, and (her) history of censure support the court’s finding that her conduct at trial was willful, egregious, and not entitled to a presumption of unintentionality,” the judge wrote in her 31-page opinion.
The ruling not only overturns the jury’s verdict in December awarding $260,000 in damages to Nicole Tomaskovic for the July 2007 incident involving Officer William Szura but also ends litigation over whether the city had a pattern and practice of covering up for the actions of bad officers.
Ellis, who was an assistant corporation counsel defending Chicago police officers against allegations of wrongdoing between 2004 and 2008, said she recognized that overturning a jury verdict and finding in favor of the losing side “is the most severe sanction available in litigation and should not be imposed lightly.”
City lawyers had asked the judge to take the action against Kurtz after the hotly contested trial. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department declined comment on the ruling issued Thursday.
Kurtz, who withdrew from the case earlier this year, could not be reached for comment Friday. Tomaskovic’s new attorney also was unavailable.
Szura, a longtime mounted officer who has since retired from the force, was accused of attacking Tomaskovic and her two friends, Kelly Fuery and Debra Sciortino, after he pulled over Fuery’s car on the side of the expressway as they were headed home from the Gay Pride Parade.
Szura had worked crowd control at the parade with his horse but was off-duty when he said he saw Fuery throw something at his vehicle as they tailgated him. Szura testified at trial in December that he hit the brakes, then pulled to the shoulder of the expressway just west of downtown to calm down.
Fuery alleged, however, Szura forced her off the road by staying in front of her car and slowing to a stop.
Either way, the two left their vehicles, and a confrontation ensued that quickly spun out of control.
Fuery alleged that Szura — without identifying himself as a police officer — drew a handgun and stuck it in her midsection. According to her deposition, she said to Szura, “What are you going to do, shoot me?” Szura then is alleged to have struck Fuery in the face and knocked down Sciortino when she tried to intervene.
Tomaskovic, who had been following in another vehicle, ran up to help but Szura slammed her against a car and concrete barrier so hard it ruptured two discs in her back that later required surgery, according to court filings.
Amid the melee, a motorist called 911 to report seeing a woman knocked into a lane of traffic, court records showed.
“I had to swerve and almost … hit her,” a transcript of the call in court records quoted the motorist as saying.
The jury found in favor of Szura on all counts except for Tomaskovic’s claim of excessive force.
The Tribune wrote about the lawsuit in an article in early 2014 and again during the trial in December. In the online version of the December article, the Tribune posted transcripts and audio of the 911 calls as well as a photo of Tomaskovic in the hospital — materials that hadn’t been admitted into evidence at trial.
Lawyers for the city cried foul, claiming Kurtz was deliberately trying to influence the jury by leaking the transcripts to the media even though the jury was under strict instructions from the judge not to read or listen to any media accounts of the trial. Ellis later questioned the jurors, and none said they had read the article.
Queried by the judge during the trial, Kurtz denied giving the materials to the Tribune.
Asked by the judge where the Tribune got the materials, a lawyer for the newspaper declined to answer, citing reporters’ privilege.
In her ruling, Ellis wrote she was unable to “conclusively determine” how or when the Tribune was given the materials but said that “the most likely scenario is that Kurtz or someone working at her direction provided the materials” to the newspaper.
A publicist for Kurtz had given the materials to the Tribune — but three years earlier when there were no restrictions on their release. At least one television station had broadcast the materials as well three years ago.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @jmetr22b
