Seven past and present school board members have been dropped as defendants in Tony Peraica’a lawsuit against Riverside-Brookfield High School Township District 208.

Last week in a brief appearance before Cook County Circuit court Judge Leroy Martin, Peraica’s lawyer agreed to file an amended complaint and to not name any of the seven board members as defendants.

The lawsuit, which was filed in April, charges that District 208 and RBHS employees engaged in illegal campaign advocacy on behalf of last April’s tax increase referendum. It originally named District 208 and the seven board members who were on the board at the time of the referendum as defendants. The board members were sued both individually and in their official capacities.

The claims against former board members Jim Marciniak, Larry Herbst, Sue Kleinmeyer and MariAnn Leibrandt and current board members Matt Sinde, Dan Moon and Mike Welch were dismissed in an agreed order signed by Judge Martin on Aug. 24.

“We agreed to dismiss all the individual defendants,” said Andrew Spiegel, the attorney for Peraica and Taxpayers United of America the plaintiffs in the suit.  “The legislature has set up a system that immunizes public officials for most filings, and it would be difficult in good faith to allege that what they did fell within the exceptions to immunity in the statute.”

Herbst, who, like Marciniak, Kleinmeyer and Leibrandt, did not seek re-election to the board in April, was not surprised that the claims against him and the other board members were dismissed.

“That was the right decision that was made,” said Herbst when informed that he had been dropped as a defendant. “It should have never been brought in the first place. It was frivolous. I believe it was an individual grandstanding and a group doing it for political purposes.”

Sinde was also happy that the claims against him and other board members were dismissed.

“I’m glad the former board members and the current board members don’t have that hanging over their head,” Sinde said. 

In addition, Spiegel will drop the part of his lawsuit that claimed that the ballot language of the referendum was intentionally misleading.

Spiegel had lost on that point in two other suits filed this spring against school districts that passed referendums in Oak Park and Wilmette. Both cases were thrown out of court, although Spiegel is appealing both rulings. Since the RBHS referendum was defeated at the polls, the issue of ballot language is not important to the District 208 case.

“We’re not going to litigate that issue in this case,” Spiegel said.

Spiegel has until Sept. 7 to file an amended complaint in the suit against District 208. District 208 is expected to be the only defendant named in the amended complaint.

Once the amended complaint is filed, attorneys representing District 208 are expected to quickly file a motion to dismiss the suit.

They had filed a motion to dismiss the suit on Aug. 12, but that motion was withdrawn last week after Spiegel agreed to amend his complaint and to drop the claims against the individual board members.

Attorneys will next be in court on the case for a status hearing on Sept. 21.