Hearing unlikely to resolve marathon IPA sex-harassment suit

A settlement conference is set for today in federal court in downtown Chicago in the suit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against International Profit Associates, a Buffalo Grove-based business consulting firm, but it isn't expected to resolve the case.

The EEOC filed a sex-harassment suit on behalf of more than 100 plaintiffs eight years ago, but it has yet to go to trial.

"I think that's fair to say it is unusual," said Diane Smason, one of the original EEOC attorneys to file the case on June 12, 2001, and who is still on it today.

"I'm certainly hoping that this can be settled," said Marion Townson, of Des Plaines, the primary plaintiff, who first filed complaints with the EEOC in 1998. "I look at it as a fiasco."

Smason, however, did not share the optimism that today's conference could bring an end to the suit. "We always go into settlement conferences hopeful that the case will settle," Smason said, "but I do think that this is a very difficult case to settle given the history of it."

IPA attorney Myron Cherry did not return a call seeking a response. Company officials have previously denied the allegations.

Court documents allege that sexual harassment was rampant at IPA, a business consulting company formed by John Burgess, 60, of North Barrington, in 1991 that grew into a $165 million firm by the early 2000s. Women employed there charged that they were groped, called names and solicited for sex on a "near constant" basis, with punishments assessed those who failed to comply.

Before coming to the Chicago area, Burgess was convicted of attempted grand larceny, which led to his disbarment as an attorney in New York in the 1980s, and a few years earlier, he pled guilty to patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute, according to media reports.

In a separate case, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued IPA in April for allegedly cheating hundreds of small businesses out of thousands of dollars. That case is still pending.

Smason said IPA has continuously sought to drag out the EEOC case.

"I think that the defendant has taken many actions to try to delay the case by filing what we perceive to be a lot of frivolous motions," Smason added, "and the judge has taken the time to review those and given us a chance to respond. But it has all dragged out over a period of years."

Smason said the delaying tactics have been strategic. "Memories fade," she said. "It's also a strategy of IPA's to discourage women from participating, because it just is taking so long that they hope people will get so discouraged they'll drop out. That has not happened."

The case is under the jurisdiction of Judge Joan Gottschall, although today's settlement conference will take place before Judge Morton Denlow. Should it fail to produce a resolution, the suit is scheduled to go to trial June 14, almost exactly nine years to the day it was filed.