Lawyer makes city a repeat rival
Thomas J. Ramsdell
(Crain's) — Thomas J. Ramsdell, who lost every varsity football game he played in college, has a much better record lining up against the city of Chicago.
Mr. Ramsdell, 41, a lawyer with his own firm and a rock band singer on the side, has won rulings in the past year in suits that challenged the city's landmarks ordinance and the Latin School of Chicago's plan to develop a soccer field on Chicago Park District property.
The victories cemented the burly Mr. Ramsdell's reputation as a scrappy legal fighter unafraid to fight the city.
"He's an imposing person" in court, says Albert Hanna, a senior vice-president with Chicago based real estate firm Draper & Kramer Inc. and his client in the landmarks ordinance case. "And he doesn't get rattled when someone disagrees with what he's saying."
Mr. Ramsdell's biggest current battle is a lawsuit challenging the city's use of tax-increment financing for Uptown's Wilson Yard project. He represents a neighborhood group that says developer Peter Holsten shouldn't have gotten a $58-million subsidy to finance his mixed-use project on Broadway between Wilson and Montrose avenues.
In a suit filed in December, Fix Wilson Yard Inc. contends among other things that Mr. Holsten's development could be built without public subsidies. A call to Mr. Holsten, president of Chicago-based Holsten Real Estate Development Corp., was not returned.
The Daley administration's widespread use of TIF money for favored real estate developments has been loudly criticized, but by suing, Mr. Ramsdell is putting his winning streak against the city in jeopardy.
He's willing to take on long odds outside the courtroom, too. In 2002 he ran as the Republican candidate for state comptroller, losing easily to Democrat Daniel Hynes, son of powerful South Side politician Thomas Hynes.
Mr. Ramsdell, who says he might run for office again, took the defeat in stride, and he vows to do the same if the Wilson Yard lawsuit doesn't turn out in his favor.
"I don't intend to lose the case," says Mr. Ramsdell, who founded his own firm in 2005, now called Ramsdell & Hind, and is lead singer of rock band Citizen Puppet. "But if it doesn't go our way, I don't think it takes the magic off" his other legal victories.
Mr. Ramsdell attributes much of his success to the self-discipline he learned playing football at Winnetka's New Trier High School and Columbia University in New York, which went 0-10 in 1986 when Mr. Ramsdell played offensive and defensive line. The season was part of Columbia's historic 44-game varsity winless streak in the 1980s.
Mr. Ramsdell learned legal blocking and tackling in the five years he worked as a lawyer under the Jerome Torshen, a politically connected attorney known for his ability to solve sticky legal troubles.
Mr. Torshen's firm is where Mr. Ramsdell met Mr. Hanna, who over the years has waged a personal litigation campaign against the city's land-use ordinances. Mr. Ramsdell has filed five lawsuits against the city on behalf of Mr. Hanna, building a reputation for Mr. Ramsdell as a friend of the underdog.
Mr. Hanna is one of two plaintiffs in the landmarks case. In January, an Illinois appellate court ruled that the 1968 ordinance is unconstitutionally vague. The ruling technically involved only two of the city's landmark districts, but it could be applied to all the city's landmark areas, a lawyer told Crain's at the time. The city has asked the Illinois Supreme Court to review the case.
"Tom isn't timid about making arguments that go against the grain of common wisdom," says Robert J. Slobig, president of Torshen Slobig Genden Dragutinovich & Axel Ltd., the Chicago law firm where Mr. Ramsdell worked from 1995 to 2000.
Mr. Ramsdell, a Winnetka native, graduated from Columbia in 1989 and earned a law degree three years later at American University in Washington, D.C. He did insurance defense work for three years at a Chicago firm now known as Stellato & Schwartz Ltd., before leaving in 1995 to join Mr. Torshen.
In 2000 he joined Marshall Gerstein & Borun LLP, a Chicago firm that specializes in intellectual property law. He made partner at Marshall in 2003 but struck out on his own two years later after his work for Mr. Hanna brought him attention — if not riches.
"There's not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," says Carl Myers, an attorney with Peoria-based Caterpillar Inc. and a former colleague. "But he's still kicking the city's butt."
