Last month the Daley administration announced it intended to hold the line on litigation in order to save the city desperately needed cash. Yet on December 4 lawyers for the city announced that they were appealing a ruling that went against them in a two-year case involving Mark Weinberg, the public-interest lawyer who’s been waging a one-man campaign against Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz.
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And who could blame them? By his own admission, Weinberg can be a major pain in the neck. He’s been going at Wirtz, with no sign of letting up, since the early 90s, when he began publishing the Blue Line, a satirical hockey program he peddled to fans as they streamed into the stadium to see the Blackhawks play. In 1997 he stopped putting out the program, but in December 2000 he was back outside the United Center. This time he was hawking a self-published paperback called Career Misconduct: The Story of Bill Wirtz’ Greed, Corruption and the Betrayal of Blackhawks’ Fans.
According to Weinberg, three United Center security guards–all of them off-duty Chicago police officers–did a lot more than that to him on December 27, 2000. He claims they put him in a headlock, threw him to the ground, cuffed his hands behind his back, led him into the United Center, and held him in a room with his hand chained to the wall. Eventually they had him carted off to jail and charged with assault. The security guards said Weinberg had started an altercation, but later the charge was dropped; Weinberg sued the company that employed the security guards for false arrest, and the case is still pending.
In December, Weinberg was back on the street, selling his Wirtz book and giving away autographed copies of the appellate court’s decision. “It’s been great–people couldn’t be nicer,” he says. “A lot of the fans said, ‘Where have you been? We’ve missed you.’ One police lieutenant congratulated me and said, ‘I was hoping you’d win.’ It’s like in The Wizard of Oz when they kill the witch and everyone says, ‘Hail Dorothy.’”
