In July 2026 the Village of Manteno, through the mayor's appointed counsel, went to court against four of its own elected trustees and the attorney they had voted to keep. A judge threw the case out on July 21 because no complaint had ever been filed. This page holds the filing, the two grounds it argued, and where the litigation stands now.
The board: a resolution stating that the Village did not authorize this litigation and does not consent to it, and directing that no Village funds be spent prosecuting it. That passes by a majority of those voting and cannot be vetoed, because it spends nothing. Whether counsel must then withdraw is for the court, but the resolution puts the Village's position in the record the judge will read. If the trustees want the strongest legal ground, it is the missed 5-to-10-day report under 65 ILCS 5/3.1-35-10, which restores a removed officer on its own, not the four-vote disapprovals.
The mayor: one nomination the board will confirm, or a re-nomination of Cainkar, moots the case at any meeting. Nothing in the statute bars re-nominating a removed officer, and a confirmed successor displaces any holdover (3.1-30-5(d)).
The Toolbox: the lawsuit, in full → · The attorney standoff →
A neutral summary of the emergency motion filed July 10, 2026. You can read the full 33-page filing (motion, memorandum of law, the mayor's and Trustee Barry's affidavits, and both exhibits) in the Documents section.
| Case | The Village of Manteno v. Trustee Cameron "CJ" Boudreau, Trustee Annette Zimbelman, Trustee Todd Crockett, and Trustee Joel Gesky |
| Court | Circuit Court of the 21st Judicial Circuit, Kankakee County, Illinois, Case No. 26CH21 |
| Filed | July 10, 2026 (motion dated July 7, 2026) |
| Filed by | Vasselli Law, LLC (James Vasselli, Amalia Rioja, Kevin Morrison), the mayor's appointed counsel |
| Also targeted | Joseph Cainkar and the Law Offices of Louis F. Cainkar, Ltd. (sought to be enjoined) |
| What it asks for | A temporary restraining order; a declaration that the June 25 meeting was void; preservation of the pre–June 25 status quo; expedited depositions; and a waiver of bond |
The Village argues Village Code § 1-6-3 sets the only way to call a special meeting: a written, signed "call" presented to the Village Clerk, followed by Clerk-served notice. It says none of that happened: no written call, and the agenda was posted by a staff member at a trustee's direction. So, it argues, everything done June 25 is "void ab initio."
Separately, the Village argues that even a valid meeting couldn't fix the vote, because the power to appoint the village attorney belongs to the president with the board's advice and consent, not to the trustees acting alone. It relies on the Village Code, the Illinois Municipal Code, and Pechous v. Slawko (Ill. 1976).
The Village frames the harm as urgent and ongoing: competing attorneys in active litigation, a demand to commit public money, and risk to attorney–client privilege. Whether that argument prevails depends on the legal questions analyzed next, including one important statute the filing does not mention.
The votes the filing is fighting, and the two-thirds question. The trustees voted to disapprove Cainkar's removal three times: 4–2 on June 15 (the night the removal letter was delivered, on Trustee Gesky's motion, per the Village's own posted minutes), 4–0 on June 25 at the special meeting the suit attacks, and 4–1–1 on July 6. The statute that makes a disapproval vote matter, 65 ILCS 5/3.1-35-10, requires "a two-thirds vote of all members authorized by law to be elected" of the corporate authorities. For a village the corporate authorities are the president and six trustees, seven people, so on the plain reading two-thirds is five votes, and each of the trustees' four-vote disapprovals is one short. Where the legislature meant to leave the mayor out it said so (3.1-40-50 counts "alderpersons then holding office"). No published Illinois case decides the point. Manteno Code 1-5-5(F) speaks of "the board of trustees by two-thirds vote," but an ordinance cannot lower a statutory threshold, and the code's "board of trustees" is itself defined to include the president. The trustees' better argument is not the vote count; it is the statute's automatic-restoration clause, discussed on the legal page. Added September 22, 2026. This page previously omitted the June 15 vote, and the site had framed the two-thirds question as 4 of 6 with 5 of 7 as the outlier; the statute's text points the other way.
A case management conference is what it sounds like: the judge sets a briefing schedule, gives the trustees a deadline to respond, and likely converts the TRO request onto a slower preliminary-injunction track. One tell supports this: the motion was filed July 10 as an "Emergency", and Illinois emergency TROs can be heard within days. Instead the first setting is twenty days out. Either the court didn't see an emergency, or nobody pressed for one. Functionally, the "emergency" has already fizzled. Expect the least dramatic outcome: dates on a calendar.
Chancery judges do not want to run a village's HR department. Expect a nudge, possibly a firm one, toward the exits the parties already have: a standstill agreement, special conflict counsel for the litigation, the board confirming a mutually acceptable successor, or the board's unused § 1-9-4 power to hire its own legislative counsel. If the judge says anything memorable on July 30, our bet is it's a version of "you have the tools to end this without me."
The suit is filed in the name of "the Village of Manteno" by a firm the board has twice declined to confirm, against four of the six trustees, a majority of the village's corporate authorities. The trustees' obvious first move is a motion to dismiss for lack of authority to sue, or to disqualify Vasselli Law: under Westmont, engaging village counsel takes the mayor and board acting together. The mayor's answer, that her 30-day temporary appointment gave the firm interim authority, depends on the removal being valid, which is the very thing being litigated. It's circular, and judges notice circles. If this motion gets filed, it becomes the whole ballgame.
The judge could set an early evidentiary hearing on the TRO/preliminary injunction, but with competing attorneys both still functioning, dueling meeting-validity affidavits, and a political calendar (the July 20 board meeting) that keeps changing the facts, most judges would let the record settle first.
TROs exist to freeze the status quo against immediate, irreparable harm. The status quo right now is Cainkar functioning at the board table, and the claimed harms (dueling attorneys, a disputed $250/hour engagement letter, privilege risk) are mostly fixable with money or case management. This motion asks the court to change the status quo, urgently, three weeks after filing. We'd be surprised.
Most municipal governance wars end in a negotiated exit, not a published opinion: a new village attorney both sides can live with is confirmed, the suit is dismissed or quietly mooted, and everyone declares victory. Litigation is slow and expensive for a village of 9,000; politics (a veto fight, a new nominee, the pressure of every packed board meeting, and eventually the 2027 consolidated election) moves faster than chancery court. The lawsuit's most realistic function may be as leverage toward exactly this outcome.
If a court does reach the merits, judges take the narrowest path available, and here that path is § 3.1-35-10's self-executing restoration clause, the statute the lawsuit never cites. If the judge finds the mayor never reported her reasons "at a meeting" within the window, Cainkar was restored automatically, and the court never has to decide whether the June 25 meeting was valid, or the two-thirds math. The same ruling would likely affirm the mayor's structural point that trustees cannot unilaterally retain counsel (voiding the unsigned engagement letter). Cainkar stays; the trustees get told they can't hire him themselves; the mayor keeps the appointment power but not this appointment. Nobody's happy, which is usually the sign of a correct ruling.
If the authority-to-sue challenge (scenario 3 above) lands, the case gets dismissed or the Vasselli firm gets disqualified without any court ever ruling on the June 25 meeting or the removal. Legally unsatisfying, practically decisive: a dismissed lawsuit leaves Cainkar at the table and the mayor with no judicial vehicle to remove him.
A court could find § 1-6-3's clerk-notice steps mandatory and void the June 25 meeting. But that only knocks out one of the trustees' two paths: the automatic-restoration clause doesn't depend on the meeting at all, and even a voided reinstatement vote doesn't confirm Vasselli; the board's advice-and-consent power survives any ruling. The likeliest result of a "win" here is the same stalemate, one lawsuit older.
The mayor's maximal outcome (removal upheld, June 25 voided, Vasselli entrenched) runs into the board's consent power and the serial-temporary-appointment problem (AG Op. 94-012); she can't install a permanent attorney the board won't confirm, ever. The trustees' maximal outcome (everything they did blessed in full) runs into Westmont's rule against unilateral retention and the real § 1-6-3 questions about the meeting. The law, as best we can read it, points toward messy middles, which is why scenarios 1 and 2 top this list.
Wildcards that could scramble all of this: the Nov. 12 hearing on who represents the Village (the July 21 dismissal decided nothing on the merits; the case is back before the same judge, briefed by both sides, and any ruling will be the first on the question); a new appointment attempt or fresh removal charges (state law bars re-removing the same officer for the same offense, so any second removal needs new grounds); the clerk's office, which has now turned over four times since late 2025 and is filled by a temporary appointment the board did not consent to; either side appealing whatever comes; the 2027 consolidated election reshaping the board itself; and the separate CCOM/Gotion lawsuit running underneath everything. If the attorney fight ever changes who controls the Village's defense of that case, the stakes jump by an order of magnitude, because Michigan shows what turning on Gotion mid-project costs (a federal injunction and, as of June 2026, a $24M damages demand against the township that tried; see Fact Check c35–c36). Published July 17, 2026; updated July 31 and September 22, graded against reality as rulings arrive.
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