The latest round in the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Hospital was a hearing before Judge Neil H. Cohen last Friday that had me thinking it’s too bad TruTV hasn’t hit Cook County courtrooms yet.
He did.
At issue was a motion by the city to dismiss the lawsuit filed in November by Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The preservationists sued after the commission, in an unprecedented burst of bureaucratic efficiency, granted Prentice preliminary landmark designation and then rescinded it in a single afternoon.
When assistant corporation counsel Mardell Nereim attempted to argue that the commission’s whiz-bang proceedings had been perfectly transparent and legal, Cohen hammered her with a barrage of clearly antagonistic questions:
“Did you violate your own rule, yes or no?”
According to a previous state supreme court ruling, said Cohen, he can’t deal with failures of the commission to follow its own rules unless they violate the constitution.
