The former wife of George S. ”Mugsy” Halas Jr., son of the founder of the Chicago Bears, and her two children have filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking between $50 million and $100 million in damages from the Chicago police and fire departments and other defendants on grounds they participated in a ”cover-up” of Halas` death in 1979.
Therese Halas and her two children by Halas, Christine, 22, and Stephen, 20, seek ”no less than $50 million and no more than $100 million” from the Chicago police and fire departments; the Cook County Medical Examiner`s office; Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Halas died; the Bears; the National Football League; and its commissioner, Alvin H. ”Pete” Rozelle.
The suit also names Halas` widow, Patricia, whom Halas married in 1978;
attorney Don H. Reuben and his former law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, who have represented the Bears, Halas` father, George S. Sr., and the family of Virginia McCaskey, Halas` sister; and Dr. Peter Freidell, a fellow Water Tower Place resident who tried to administer emergency treatment to Halas during the night of Dec. 15-16, 1979, when he died at the age of 54.
The suit accuses the fire and police departments, the medical examiner`s office, the hospital, Patricia Halas and Dr. Freidell of failing to obey state law that requires a full autopsy in sudden or mysterious deaths; failing to preserve records concerning Halas` death; and failing to preserve his body, causing his vital organs to be destroyed.
This destruction destroyed the ”prima facie” evidence of
”malpractice,” ”homicide” or other causes of death that would have enabled Therese Halas and her children to collect double indemnity payments from insurance policies, the suit says.
Kirkland & Ellis is accused of participating in a reorganization of the Bears that ”squeezed out” Therese Halas and her children from representation on the team`s board of directors and of helping ”cover up” the circumstances of her former husband`s death.
Reuben is accused of talking George S. Halas Sr. out of leaving Therese Halas a bequest, money that instead went to Patricia, thus doubling her inheritance.
The Bears, Reuben and Kirkland & Ellis also are accused of making calls to the media describing Therese Halas ”as a liar, mentally unbalanced and without veracity to her public statements.”
Reuben and the law firm also are accused of ”fomenting a full fratricidal war between the two branches of the George S. Halas family.”
The suit charges that unidentified individuals threatened in 1980 to institute court proceedings to deprive Therese Halas of the custody of her two children, then 14 and 12, if she did not ”stop asking questions about” her former husband`s death.
It also says that Rozelle`s wife visited a ”medical facility used by plaintiffs . . . to determine how court-mandated removal of Christine and Stephen from the custody of their mother, Therese, . . . would impact medically upon one of the said children.”
The suit further charges that eight days before his death, Halas
”expressed to Therese his intent to dissolve his second marriage to Patricia and to return to his first marriage to Therese and to his children, Christine and Stephen.”
Therese and her children also charge that in January, 1980, George Halas Sr. received an offer of $50 million-or ”a blank check”-for the Bears from
”a prominent local family” and that George Halas Jr. made more than $600,000 in 1979.
Therese and her children filed Tuesday`s suit without being represented by an attorney. The suit charges that the various Halas court battles have run up an estimated $2 million in legal fees, and Christine has said that the only inheritance she and her brother have left is their Bears stock, which they contend has become difficult to sell because of restrictions caused by the reorganization.
The suit was filed on the same day that Judge Henry Budzinski of Probate Court refused to reconsider his ruling of Sept. 1 that upheld the
reorganization of the Bears, started in 1981 and completed in 1984, but allowed Christine and Stephen a chance to prove that their Bears stock has depreciated in value because the reorganization deprived them of a
representative on the team`s board.
