The former head of human resources at Chicago’s Saint Anthony Hospital has accused her former employer of wrongly firing her, saying she was terminated because she refused to go along with the hospital CEO’s desire to hire and steer contracts to people connected with former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and other formerly influential Chicago Democratic politicians in a “pay for play” scheme to rake in state funding.
On June 18, Stella Sosa Wolf filed suit in Chicago federal court against the hospital, accusing Saint Anthony Hospital of illegal retaliation, violations of the Whistleblower Act and gender and age discrimination, among other allegations.
Wolf is represented in the action by attorneys Gail S. Eiseberg, David A. Eisenberg and Alexander N. Loftus, of the firm of Loftus & Eisenberg, of Chicago.
According to the complaint, Wolf served as Chief Human Resources Officer at Saint Anthony Hospital on Chicago’s West Side, from 2016 to June 2020. According to the complaint, Wolf is “a 66-year-old, Hispanic woman,” who resides in suburban Oakbrook Terrace.
According to the complaint, Wolf has “three decades of experience as a human resource professional,” including five years a corporate vice president of human resources at another company, before she was allegedly recruited for the same role at Saint Anthony Hospital.
According to the complaint, Wolf’s relationship with Saint Anthony’s President and Chief Executive Officer Guy Medaglia soured in 2019, when she allegedly began to receive complaints about “hostile behavior” by Medaglia “towards his female subordinates.”
According to the complaint, she confronted Medaglia, but reached no resolution. According to the complaint, after that conversation, Medaglia allegedly “undermined, marginalized, and belittled Wolf.”
According to the complaint, the relationship took another turn when Wolf allegedly objected to Medaglia’s alleged decision to create new jobs at the hospital for three people related to former Illinois State Sen. Martin Sandoval.
Sandoval, a Chicago Democrat, resigned from office and pleaded guilty to charges he took bribes from a red light camera company to promote legislation on their behalf. Sandoval had not yet been sentenced when he died at the age of 56 from COVID-19.
According to Wolf’s complaint, Medaglia allegedly went around Wolf, and created positions for Sandoval’s son, Martin Sandoval Jr., the former senator’s daughter, Jennifer Sandoval, and Jennifer’s boyfriend, Matthew Castillo.
According to the complaint, in exchange, Sandoval allegedly secured a $5.5 million state grant for Saint Anthony Hospital.
Later, Wolf asserts Medaglia also ordered her to help Andrew Madigan, son of former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, undercut competitors to secure the contract to serve as Saint Anthony’s insurance broker.
When Wolf objected to the request, Medaglia allegedly insisted “that in Chicago you ‘pay to play’ and this was one of those times it was necessary to play.”
However, Wolf allegedly secured three competitive bids, and the hospital ultimately decided to stay with its prior insurance broker, and not Madigan’s son.
Later, according to the complaint, “Medaglia blamed Wolf for a lack of financial support from the Satte in a leadership meeting, noting that Senator Sandoval was by then under indictment for political corruption and Madigan was ‘not happy with us.’”
The complaint noted that a number of people closely associated with the former House Speaker have since been indicted on corruption charges, and Madigan himself has been implicated, though not indicted, in the ComEd bribery investigation.
In late 2019, the complaint said, a surgery required Wolf to work from home, and, in the months that followed, she was allegedly subjected to an investigation by the hospital, at Medaglia’s alleged insistence, into allegations she had mistreated a former executive assistant, who the complaint said, had been fired for “poor performance during the assistant’s probationary period.”
In her complaint, Wolf asserted the investigation was discriminatory, because a different standard was allegedly applied to her then to other male executives accused of alleged misconduct and who yet remain among the hospital’s leadership.
According to the complaint, Wolf was terminated on June 18, 2020, the day before she was return to work from protected medical leave. According to the complaint, the hospital claimed her position had been eliminated under a workforce reduction program. However, according to the complaint, she had been replaced by a “substantially younger woman who had not pushed back against Medaglia’s instructions and behavior.”
In her complaint, Wolf is seeking unspecified damages, including past compensation lost and “all compensation and benefits she will lose in the future” from the hospital’s alleged actions, plus punitive damages and compensatory damages for “emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life,” and other losses.
A spokesperson for the hospital did not respond to a voice message left by the Cook County Record on June 18.