Daley Center Probate Court: Secret Tribunals? Where is the Inventory and Where is the Accounting? 2 years have passed!

As many of you know, the Probate Court file for Mary G. Sykes is pretty much a complete mess. Documents, Briefs, Pleading and Motions are not in date order, they are all over the place, and many, many important filings appear to be completely missing.
Last week I was looking for the "Inventory" and Accountings. An Inventory is required to be filed by any new Guardian no less than 60 days after opening up an estate. An accounting should be filed at the end of each year from date of appointment.
Carolyn Toerpe was appointed Pleanary Guardian in Dec. 2009. This means the first inventory was due by Jan. 2010 and the first accounting by Jan. 2011. I searched the file thoroughly, but found no Inventory and no Accountings. I found one court Order that referred to the Inventory and a "Current Accounting" but as I recall, it indicated both of these documents to be amazingly late (over a year, if memory serves me right--but I will check and update as I have more time to look at the file. Currently, the court does not allow the file to be transported to the file room and you have to look at it in court as one is able to.)
One of the most hotly contested issues in this guardianship IS the accounting and inventory, and now all those are missing and a second accounting is supposed to be due soon in this case.
I have no idea why Adam Stern and Cynthia Farenga allow for such shenanigans to take place. They are supposed to be actively involved in ensuring a timely and accurate (to the best of their knowledge) accounting has been filed with the court, and if the relatives are making loud protestations that items are missing, they are supposed to take notes, conduct an investigation and report to the court their findings. Ken Ditkowsky was Mary's attorney for many years, if he is asserting items were missing, well he knew Mary and Charles Sykes (deceased) and their affairs the best, and his comments should be taken seriously.
My question, is why are these important documents apparently missing from the file? What happened to them? Why was the entry of one "Current Accounting" and the inventory "entered and continued" at a very late date? This should be all public record so the relatives will know that AS, CF and Judge Stuart are not running "secret tibunals" that do not conform to Illinois Probate Laws and Procedure.

Seizure of an Attorney's Laptop--is this the US of Russia or what?

Today I had a most unusual experience. I have never seen this before in 25 years of practice.

In court room 1804, Judge Stuart, while I was attending a hearing on the Sykes case, the bailiff walked up to me and took my laptop! She didn’t ask me to put it away. She just took it. I told her that the courts allow electronic note taking, but she took it anyway.

This is at a hearing where Adam Stern and Peter Schmeidel were going on and on about how I was disqualified from representing Gloria for notarizing one document and how I was running a blog about the Mary Sykes case (horrors)!

Some have speculated (this is only a rumor now) about how I might have been blogging about the case in the court room!

The court personnel (where were they during 6th grade US constitution exam) thought I couldn’t take notes because I was not a court reporter. Interesting, but no cigar. The reality is, I cannot take the place of a court reporter because they have specialized training and a license. But as a US citizen in an open court, I do have the constitutional right to take notes.

The big questions are tho: 1) why are Adam Stern and Peter Schmeidel and the court so overly concerned about my running a court room blog? 2) No one has asserted how anything posted on this blog is untrue (other than Cynthia Farenga, and adequate evidence was attached to a communication sent to her that completely dispels this notion) and 3) why is it no one in that count room seems to know that blogging, public dissemination of court room proceedings are a basic and important US constitutional right?

Open courts are inimical to a free and just society. It is of the most urgent importance that reporters, bloggers and anyone with a quest for truth and justice be allowed to enter into any US court room and take notes and publish them anywhere there is an audience interested in the proceedings and the free and open flow of information (or in this case, lack thereof).

We all have an interest in keeping our courtrooms open and free. By that we can ensure that justice is done there.

Sadly, today it was severely lacking. And even more sad was a courtroom filled with about a dozen people that didn’t seem to know or care about how important that right was.

I recall getting 100 on my 6th grade US and Illinois constitution exam. I guess it’s sad when you put the people that got all the low scores in charge of the courtroom!

PS–the files on my laptop go back to documents and emails prepared for clients back to 1990! I wonder how Judge Stuart is going to explain to clients why their information was placed into the hands of a court room bailiff who knows nothing of them or their business. She was a part of it. I will publish the transcript when I get it.

PPS–there are devices on the market that can scam a hard drive via an open port in minutes! Why did the judge allow a meagerly paid court room bailiff access to a lap top of an attorney that had years of confidential and highly sensitive client information which should have the eminence of attorney client privilege on it with very little apparent forethought and absolutely no safety precautions for the data contained therein?

All good questions.

Another day in probate. Another day with more questions than answers.