{"id":244478,"date":"2010-01-28T18:53:58","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T23:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a81ffc75970b"},"modified":"2010-01-28T19:59:40","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T00:59:40","slug":"brown-sues-obrien-for-defamation-over-tv-ad-in-cook-county-board-president-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/244478","title":{"rendered":"Brown sues O’Brien for defamation over TV ad in Cook County Board president contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick and Robert Becker<\/em> at 5:50 p.m.<\/p>\n

Attack ads are a staple of politics, but one of the four Democratic candidates for Cook County Board president is accusing another of stepping over the legal line with his TV commercial.<\/p>\n

In a defamation lawsuit filed today, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown asks a judge to order Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O’Brien, his campaign and its chairman to pay her $1.25 million in damages for this accusation in a TV commercial: \u201cEthically challenged Dorothy Brown forced employees to give her cash gifts.\u201d
<\/br>
<\/br>Last summer, the Tribune published a story about Brown receiving annual birthday and Christmas gifts, including cash, from her employees. Brown said she would discontinue the practice, adding that the gifts were voluntary and did not affect personnel decisions.<\/p>\n

Attorney Adam Lasker, who filed the defamation suit, did not dispute that Brown had received gifts but said the O\u2019Brien campaign went too far when it stated as fact that employees were \u201cforced\u201d to give them. \u201cThis very clear and simple language states as\u00a0 a matter of fact that she did something she has never done,\u201d Lasker said.
<\/br><\/p>\n

In response, the O\u2019Brien campaign said stories about \u201cBrown pocketing cash from her employees have been in the headlines for years now." But the campaign declined to talk about the lawsuit, saying they haven’t seen it yet.<\/p>\n

Brown and O’Brien are joined by Board President Todd Stroger and Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, 4th, in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for county board president.<\/p>\n

Also today, Stroger released his tax returns after challenging his opponents<\/a> to do the same. All declined after dismissing his announcement as a campaign ploy by
\na candidate who was last in a recent Tribune poll and behind all three
\nof his opponents in fundraising.<\/p>\n

As expected, the returns for 2007 and 2008 showed that the income of Stroger and his wife, Jeanine, comes entirely from government payrolls. Stroger gets about $138,500 for his job, and his wife was paid about $55,000 each year as a part-time deputy director for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.<\/p>\n

In the 2007 return, they also reported income from pensions and annuities of about $80,000. Stroger has said a \u201cdeferred compensation plan withdrawal\u201d led to a higher tax bill, which in turn resulted in a federal tax lien being placed on his home last year.<\/p>\n

When Stroger announced Wednesday that he would release his taxes, he said he\u2019s paid about half of the $12,000 in back taxes he owes.<\/p>\n

The Stroger family returns also showed that they claimed charitable deductions of about $5,200 each year. They did not release copies of any receipts related to those deductions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick and Robert Becker at 5:50 p.m. Attack ads are a staple of politics, but one of the four Democratic candidates for Cook County Board president is accusing another of stepping over the legal line with his TV commercial. In a defamation lawsuit filed today, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown asks a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}