A Kankakee County judge will preside over a lawsuit case filed by the former Joliet mayor who claims he was the victim of a conspiracy that led to his election loss.

Judge Lindsay Parkhurst was assigned on Wednesday to the lawsuit case originally filed in Will County by former Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who lost to Terry D’Arcy in the 2023 mayoral election.

Parkhurst was also assigned to a lawsuit case filed by former Joliet City Council member Don “Duck” Dickinson against retired Joliet Police Chief Al Roechner and former Joliet Deputy Police Chief Marc Reid.

The decision to move the two cases outside the county was made on Aug. 28 by Will County Judge Brian Barrett based on Will County Chief Judge Dan Kennedy being named as a potential witness in O’Dekirk’s case, which concerns the same incident as Dickinson’s case.

The Illinois Supreme Court sent the case to the 21st Judicial Circuit Court, which covers Kankakee and Iroquois counties.

The connection between O’Dekirk’s and Dickinson’s cases is an Illinois State Police investigation into allegations in 2020 that O’Dekirk was intimidating Dickinson over his intimate photos.

In 2022, Dickinson was charged with making a false accusation against O’Dekirk but the case was dismissed after a special prosecutor did not object to a defense motion to dismiss the case.

Kennedy was interviewed by Illinois State Police in their investigation but he did not have any apparent connection to the case, according to police reports.

At the Aug. 28 court hearing, Dickinson’s attorney, Frank Andreano, objected to his client’s case moving outside of Will County because Kennedy is not a witness in his case and he believed the move was “forum shopping,” according to a transcript filed in Dickinson’s case.

Forum shopping is a practice of pursuing a claim in a court that will treat the claim most favorably, according to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

“The fact that somebody says the name of a chief judge — that somebody heard something at a party at a chief judge’s house, you know, I think it’s a stretch and I think that this is just forum shopping by another means but I understand your ruling, judge,” said Andreano, according to the transcript.

Barrett said he agreed with Andreano but he was in an “unfortunate situation where this is a public matter.”

“And because this is now the situation before our court, that I wouldn’t call it highly public but public for Joliet, that there are people who are looking at this and are automatically going to say, ‘Oh, well, that judge is in on it.’ And I can’t have that happen, not just for me, but for the judicial system and justice in general. I don’t want anybody walking out of my courtroom and ever saying that judge was in on it,” said Barrett, according to the transcript.

Attorneys for Roechner and Reid did not motion to take Dickinson’s case out of Will County. Dickinson’s case already had a decision from a Will County judge to deny a defense motion to dismiss his case.

In O’Dekirk’s case, the motion to move it outside Will County was supported by six defendants and the City of Joliet.

The defendants include Reid; Roechner and wife Nancy Griparis; former Herald-News Editor Joseph Hosey; Joliet City Council member Pat Mudron; and former City Council member Jim McFarland.

O’Dekirk’s lawsuit claims the six defendants were part of a “cabal” that sought to either remove him as mayor or cause him to lose the 2023 election. O’Dekirk’s lawsuit claims that the “cabal” used Dickinson as a “puppet” to make a false claim against him.

O’Dekirk filed his lawsuit in state court after it was dismissed in federal court last February.

A Grundy County judge was assigned to McFarland’s defamation lawsuit case against O’Dekirk, which regarded former Joliet Inspector General Sean Connolly’s investigation into the same incident. McFarland’s case was dismissed on legal grounds.

Connolly’s 2023 report was the first to allege Roechner, Reid and several others were part of a “cabal” that conspired against O’Dekirk.

Connolly unsuccessfully tried to move his lawsuit case against Illinois State Police to a different county. Connolly was suing state police for their records on the Dickinson investigation but the case was dismissed after a judge determined he had no power to sue.