A long, messy court fight has come to a relatively quiet end between the town of Cicero and a towing company, owned by the ex-father-in-law of Cicero’s politically-connected town lawyer, who was in turn accused by the tow company’s owner of scuttling his towing contract with Cicero amid contentious divorce proceedings between the lawyer and the tow company owner’s daughter.
Last month, the Cicero Town Council approved a settlement agreement with the now defunct Tuff Car Inc., and its owners, Eugene Potempa and his sons Tim and Pat Potempa.
Under the deal, Tuff Car agreed to pay Cicero $100,000 to end the litigation, and end all of the competing claims and counterclaims posed by both sides.
Michael T. Del Galdo
| dlglawgroup.com
Cicero would pay Tuff Car and the Potempas nothing.
At that point, Tuff Car and the Potempas filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court, claiming Cicero owed them $2 million.
According to court documents, Tuff Car secured a towing services contract with Cicero in 2005, shortly after Michael Del Galdo, principal of Berwyn-based Del Galdo Law Group, who serves as Cicero’s town attorney, married Eugene Potempa’s daughter, Bethany.
That contract included a commercial lease for a tow lot on South 46th Street in Cicero.
Cicero renewed the three-year contract three more times from 2008-2014.
Cicero ended the arrangement in 2015. At the same time, Del Galdo and Bethany initiated divorce proceedings.
In court filings since, Tuff Car asserted Cicero forced them to pay too much in rent for the tow lot, and further alleged Cicero police “directed and ordered Tuff Car to release thousands of properly-towed vehicles to their owners without payment,” costing them $2 million.
Cicero responded with a counterclaim, demanding Tuff Car cough up unpaid rent for the tow lot, dating back to 2009, plus allegedly unpaid tow fees.
Tuff Car’s legal claims were tossed out, but Cicero’s counterclaim has continued.
In 2017, Tuff Car’s owners also unsuccessfully sued Del Galdo directly. In court filings in that case and in the continuing litigation against Cicero, the Potempas accused Del Galdo of allegedly misleading Tuff Car into not paying rent to Cicero, in exchange for political favors for Cicero officeholders and their friends and associates.
The Potempas further accused Del Galdo of torpedoing their contract in response to his divorce against Potempa’s daughter, and allegedly to hide the allegedly questionable dealings between Tuff Car and Cicero.
In response, Del Galdo argued the Potempas had sued him to help Bethany in the contentious divorce case.
In those divorce proceedings, Bethany Del Galdo tried to more fully examine her ex-husband’s finances and political ties, including his purported links to former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and other influential Democrats. Three days after The Cook County Record published a story about that divorce case, focusing on Del Galdo’s apparent efforts to keep those political affiliations out of public view, a Cook County judge granted Del Galdo’s request to seal the case.
A Cook County judge dismissed Tuff Car’s lawsuit against Del Galdo in 2019.
Tuff Car and Cicero continued to fight over Cicero’s counterclaim for the past three years. Much of the most recent arguments have focused on Cicero’s efforts to “pierce the corporate veil” of Tuff Car’s ownership and financial structure, to directly target the Potempas for the money the town said it was owed.
Cicero agreed to abandon those efforts in exchange for the settlement, according to a memorandum distributed to the Cicero Town Council from one of its outside lawyers, Joseph M. Gagliardo.
Gagliardo noted the court had not yet ruled on the town’s efforts to target the Potempas individually, and “factual and legal issues exist regarding Tuff Car’s claim for the unpaid tow fees.”
The settlement was first reported by the Cicero Independiente.
The Potempas signed the deal in February.
Cook County Judge Celia Gamrath agreed to dismiss the settled case on April 4.
Tuff Carr has been represented by Angelini, Mills, Woods & Ori, of Chicago.
Cicero is represented by the firm of Laner Muchin, of Chicago.