Ald. Martin Oberman (43d), a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Illinois attorney general, criticized incumbent Neil Hartigan Monday for failing to join a consumer fraud lawsuit against the owners of an apartment building where a 27-year-old medical student was raped, tortured and slain during a 1982 home invasion.
At a press conference in Chicago, Oberman said Hartigan`s failure to join the lawsuit, filed by the parents of Marybeth Duncavage, was an example of the incumbent`s failure to do enough to protect apartment tenants in Illinois and to regulate tenant-landlord relations.
Later Monday, Roma Stewart, solicitor general in the attorney general`s office, said she made the decision against entering the Duncavage suit. Hartigan, running for renomination against Oberman in the March 18 primary, was not consulted, she said.
Duncavage, a sophomore at the Chicago Medical School in North Chicago, was killed Aug. 4, 1982, by an assailant who climbed in the window of her apartment at 714 W. Buckingham Pl., in the Lakeview neighborhood. Tommy Lee Jackson, 23, a former Navy sailor, was convicted of the murder last Oct. 8.
A ladder that the building`s owners stored outside the building had been used a year earlier by a burglar to break into the apartment that Duncavage rented, and it was used by her killer, said Jon A. Duncan, attorney for her parents.
”Her grieving family was outraged that the landlord had never told their daughter about the ladder or the burglary or how unsafe that apartment was,” Oberman said. ”So they sued, claiming a violation of the consumer fraud laws of Illinois.”
Those named in the suit were Jackson and the building`s owners, Kevin J. Allen and Raymond O`Skelly.
But when Duncan asked Hartigan`s office to join in the lawsuit as a
”friend of the court,” Stewart replied in a letter: ”While this is an interesting case, it is the policy of this office not to involve our limited staff of attorneys in cases involving a single plaintiff.”
The Duncavage lawsuit was dismissed last June by Cook County Circuit Judge Alan Morrill. An appeal of that decision is pending before the Illinois Appellate Court.
”Doesn`t Hartigan understand that a victory for the Duncavages in this case would set a precedent that would protect thousands in the future?”
Oberman said.
But Stewart said: ”Nobody can say whether a case is going to be precedent-setting. I`m surprised he would say that. He`s a lawyer, isn`t he?
The law just doesn`t work that way.”
Duncan, however, said, ”Whether we win or lose this case, there`s going to be a decision by the Appellate Court that`s going to interpret the Consumer Fraud Act.”
Essentially, the legal theory in the Duncavage lawsuit is that the building`s owners are liable under the consumer fraud law for failing to tell Marybeth Duncavage about the previous burglary and building code violations there, Duncan said.
Stewart said the legal theory was ”interesting,” but she noted that the attorney general`s office rarely enters a case in the state courts as a friend of the court. ”We generally get involved before the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal Circuit Court of Appeals,” she said.
Hartigan office`s refusal to join the case has been ”one of the reasons the case hasn`t been faring well,” Oberman said.
”You can be sure if you had the attorney general in this case, you would have the attention of the court,” he said. ”You would certainly have the attention of the Appellate Court. Mr. Hartigan doesn`t think this case is important, and I do.”
