Doctor who allegedly brandished a gun during online bankruptcy hearing faces possible criminal contempt
A longtime Northwest Side doctor faces potential criminal contempt charges after he allegedly brandished a handgun during a video-conferenced bankruptcy court hearing in the midst of a testy eviction dispute with his landlord.
The 71-year-old doctor, a third-generation physician with a family medicine practice in the Portage Park neighborhood, was ordered this week to appear before U.S. District Judge John Kness on Dec. 14 and “show cause why he should not be held in criminal contempt of court,” records show.
Any finding of criminal contempt could lead to significant jail time or other penalties.
The case conjures up interesting questions in how defendants are expected to comport themselves during remote court hearings in the COVID-19 era.
The doctor’s attorney, Anthony Klytta, of Des Plaines, told the Tribune in a telephone interview Thursday that the doctor was representing himself in his own bankruptcy case at the time and simply didn’t realize that the court’s Zoom call was technically being treated the same as appearing in person at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
“It’s just a shame that this has happened,” said Klytta. “(He) is a very good man.”
The contempt proceedings stem from a July 9 hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Janet Baer, who was presiding over the doctor’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy petition. At the heart of the case was an ongoing fight with his landlord, who’d evicted the doctor from his family’s longtime offices at Montrose and Cicero avenues in May, court records show.
The landlord claimed in a court filing that after he changed the locks to the building in the presence of Cook County sheriff’s deputies, the doctor came back and had new locks drilled, then “unlawfully reentered the premises and continued the operation of his medical practice.”
During the July hearing, which was conducted via teleconference due to the ongoing pandemic, the doctor asked the judge for a chance to speak, which she granted, records show. He then accused the landlord of threatening his life and stealing money and prescription pads.
When Baer tried to get back to the topic of the eviction, the doctor allegedly held up his concealed carry permit to the camera as well as a large black handgun. He claimed that “as a result of the landlord’s behavior, he carried the weapon with him at all times,” according to court records.
Baer immediately stopped the doctor from speaking and told him he was not allowed to have a weapon in a court of law, which the video hearing constituted, records show.
In a motion seeking a contempt order, the landlord’s attorney said the “outrageous event” should be fully documented so that any future sheriff’s deputies called on to evict the doctor would be “fully aware of the fact that (he) is not only armed but irrational.”
“Waiving a gun around and boasting that it is on your person at all times cannot be dismissed as the product of lack of knowledge of court procedure,” the motion stated. “That conduct was unhinged and the product of (him) being irrational, delusional and dangerous.”
The doctor later apologized to the court for his behavior, records show. In a court filing in September, his lawyer said that while he certainly would have known he couldn’t carry a gun into hearing in an actual courtroom, “it is another matter to presume that someone knows” that doing so in their own home could lead to criminal contempt charges.
As far as the underlying eviction dispute, the doctor has blamed it on his relationship with a disbarred attorney, who he said negotiated the rent payments in bad faith and convinced the doctor to file for bankruptcy in the first place.
