Lawsuit dismissed

The Democratic Party of McHenry County is pleased to announce that a lawsuit filed by the owners of a business known as Heroic Media, against current and former members of our Executive Board, has been voluntarily dismissed by Heroic Media.

The suit, filed on April 19, 2018, was first dismissed by the Circuit Court on November 27, 2018 for failure to state a claim. In the interests of fairness to the plaintiffs, the judge permitted them to file an amended complaint. The amended complaint, filed on January 14, 2019, was also dismissed by the Circuit Court because it too failed to state a legal claim. The court again allowed the plaintiff to amend their complaint. The plaintiffs subsequently filed a third complaint on April 9, 2019. In response, defendants filed a motion to dismiss the third complaint. After receiving our motion to dismiss, Heroic Media voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit on August 13, 2019.

What motivated the filing of this case is unclear. We do know that the fanciful allegations were re-publicized a number of times on the Internet subsequent to the filing of the original complaint, and the amended complaint, and the second amended complaint. We may never know whether the suit was motivated by an effort to damage the reputations of our board members and Party, to further a political agenda hostile to the Democratic Party, to attempt to deplete our resources in the upcoming election cycle, or for some other nefarious purpose.

We refused to respond publicly to the lawsuit or to the innuendos spread across the Internet and various social media channels, preferring to let our legal team address the allegations of the complaints in the Circuit Court. And now, after three unsuccessful attempts to plead a lawsuit that actually states a legal claim, the lawsuit has been dismissed by the plaintiffs themselves.
 
Now that the distraction of this lawsuit has been put to rest, we can continue focusing more fully on the 2020 election cycle. Our duty as a local political party is to support all of our Democratic candidates to the best of our ability. We look forward to continuing the hard work of building a better future for all Americans.