Law Firm Made Hundreds Of Thousands Defending Joliet, Prolonging Nicole Lurry's Out Of Court Settlement

JOLIET, IL — Not only did the city of Joliet taxpayers fund an out of court settlement in the millions of dollars with Nicole Lurry, the Itasca-based law firm hired to defend the city of Joliet generated more than $400,000 of income for itself, a Joliet Patch public spending analysis of the law firm's bills showed.

Joliet Patch recently obtained all the legal bills submitted to Joliet City Hall over the past six years by the law firm of Hervas, Condon and Bersani, a local government defense litigation firm. Bersani's first legal bills to the city of Joliet began in July 2020 and continued until May of this year.

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In August 2020, Nicole Lurry and her lawyers filed a federal lawsuit against the Joliet Police Department, two police officers and two police supervisors in connection with the January 2020 death of her 37-year-old husband Eric Lurry. He died after being in their custody.

Back at Joliet City Hall, during the summer of 2020, city leaders chose to retain Hervas, Condon and Bersani rather than save money and handle the case with salaried full-time lawyers already on the city's payroll. If handled the case in-house, the city might have saved the taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars.

Joliet Utilizes Municipal Law Firm 40 Miles Away

Instead, the city of Joliet spent $403,150 for legal fees, legal expenses and forensic medical services submitted as bills payable to Hervas, Condon and Bersani. The breakdown is as follows:

$321,687 in legal fees to Hervas, Condon & Bersani for its handling of the Lurry lawsuit and settlement, another $43,075 for the law firm's legal expenses and another $38,500 for forensic medical services the law firm authorized.

Prior to agreeing that its client, the city of Joliet, should pay plaintiff Nicole Lurry $2.15 million to resolve her federal lawsuit in an out of court settlement, the largest monthly bills paid out by Joliet City Hall were for the following dates:

• October 2021: $21,030
• November 2021: $19,013

• January 2022: $22,607
• April 2022: $26,597
• June 2022: $38,597
• November 2022: $26,812
• March 2023: $23,868

Two partners from the law firm who both live in Bartlett were the primary lawyers billing the city of Joliet: Mike Bersani and David Mathues. In 2020, they billed at $215 per hour and nowadays it's $250 per hour.

His law firm's biography states, "Mike Bersani is a 1988 graduate of the John Marshall Law School and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1985. Upon graduation from law school, Mike served as a judicial clerk to Florida Appellate Court Judge Edward T. Barfield. He entered private practice in 1990, first as an associate attorney with Schirott & Associates and then later as a partner with Hervas, Condon & Bersani, P.C."

As for the biography of attorney David Mathues: "David joined Hervas, Condon and Bersani, P.C. in 2017 and became a partner in 2019. He represents local government entities and their employees in all aspects of tort, employment, and civil rights litigation. He has tried a half-dozen federal civil juries and argued a similar number of cases to the Seventh Circuit. David's jury successes include a defense verdict in a fatal officer-involved shooting and a race discrimination claim by a police officer against his superiors."

Joliet's Out Of Town Law Firm Faces Major Challenges

The actions of the Joliet Police Department in regard to the death of Eric Lurry made for a difficult defense strategy.

In February 2022, Joliet Patch produced an exclusive story revealing that, "Joliet's Missing Eric Lurry Video Did Have Evidentiary Value."

The previous year, Mayor Bob O'Dekirk and City Manager Jim Capparelli hired the Connolly Law Firm in Westmont to perform an independent investigation. As part of his 23-page report, Connolly made the following observations:

• The "investigation finds video footage existed capturing images of Eric Lurry's arrest on January 28, 2020. Also, this investigation finds this video footage no longer exists as a result of not being retained by either the Task Force or the Joliet Police Department and thereby being overwritten pursuant to the Joliet Police Department's video retention policy."
• Joliet Police "Lieutenant (Joe) Rosado did not save or order anyone to download a copy of the perimeter video showing Mr. Lurry's arrest. The Joliet Police Department should have maintained a copy of this perimeter video and all video footage shown to the Task Force. Further, after the Task Force completed its investigation, the Joliet Police Department should have conducted a parallel investigation of Mr. Lurry's arrest and subsequent death while in police custody."

• 
  Separately, there was the issue with the in-squad car dash camera video being turned off by the officers who were named in Nicole Lurry's federal lawsuit.
  In 2021, Joliet Patch reported that Joliet police officer Jose Tellez has received a six-day suspension because he went inside his squad car and turned off the in-camera video system, which stopped both the video and audio recording, as backseat prisoner Lurry was overdosing in Joliet police custody.
  "The complaint alleges that on January 28, 2020, while in the east parking lot of the Joliet Police Department ... you stopped the recording of the in-squad video system. The complaint has been investigated and on the basis of available evidence has been found to be sustained," Joliet chief Dawn Malec notified Tellez on April 14, 2021.
• Dash camera video of the incident showed Joliet Police Sgt. Doug May climb into the back seat of Tellez's squad car. As Lurry was drifting out of consciousness, May smacked Lurry in the head and called him a bitch. Rather than seek immediate medical care, May and his three fellow officers with him — Tellez, Andrew McCue and Lt. Jeremy Harrison, the lead supervisor, tried to recover the plastic baggie of illegal drugs, using a baton to stick down his windpipe.
• By the time the Joliet police summoned a Joliet Fire Department ambulance to their parking lot, it was too late. Lurry died, never regaining consciousness, at St. Joe's hospital. His death became the primary reason why Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul opened a far-reaching civil rights investigation into long-standing unlawful policing practices and excessive force abuses targeting minorities at Joliet's Police Department.
• The September 2024 158-page Attorney General's report found the Joliet Police Department had a pattern of using excessive force against the community and that Joliet police discriminated against Black people and perhaps Latino citizens, based on the Attorney General's five- and seven-year data reviews of Joliet police arrests, traffic stops, vehicle searches and use of force incidents.

On May 7, 2025, Joliet Patch revealed how the city of Joliet received news that their efforts to convince federal judge Jeffrey Cummings to dismiss Nicole Lurry's August 2020 federal lawsuit for the death of her husband were unsuccessful.

The federal judge issued a 68-page ruling, and while some of Nicole Lurry's claims were thrown out, several others stayed.

READ MORE:

• Eric Lurry Lawsuit: Joliet Wants To Settle Case After 5 Years Of Federal Litigation
• Joliet Officer Turned Off Car's Video System As Eric Lurry Died
• 7-Day Suspension: Joliet Police Sgt. Slapped, Demeaned Eric Lurry
• Unlawful Policing Investigation Launched In Joliet: AG's Office