As the legal battle over control of West Suburban Hospital continues its trudge through Cook County Chancery court, the case has been referenced in another Chancery court lawsuit involving the hospital’s River Forest medical campus on Lake Street.
The holder of that property’s $22 million mortgage, Computershare Trust Company, has asked a judge to appoint a receiver to take over management of the property. On Aug. 6, attorneys for Reddy Rathnaker Patlola’s Ramco Healthcare filed their response to that motion, arguing, in part, that doing so in the River Forest case would “layer delay and uncertainty onto a process already on the verge of resolution” in the separate West Sub case.
In its objection, Ramco said the three-parcel property bordered by Lake Street, Williams Street and Central Avenue “Sits at the heart of a carefully negotiated global settlement involving multiple properties,” including the West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and Weiss Memorial Hospital on Chicago’s north side.
Attorney Scott Kaplan argues that a settlement in the West Sub case “would bring two shuttered hospitals back to life and restore critical healthcare services to communities that have been without them for months.”
Appointing a receiver separately for the River Forest campus, he said, “would do the opposite,” and add delay and uncertainty to a negotiating process it characterized as “already on the verge of resolution” and “imminent.”
The parties to the West Sub lawsuit, Kaplan said, “agreed in principle to a settlement, memorialized in a term sheet,” on May 29 in Judge Patrick Stanton’s chambers.
Ramco and Patlola are being sued by Computershare, which represents the mortgage holder on Ramco’s River Forest campus. The foreclosure lawsuit seeks more than $33 million in unpaid rents dating back to 2025, late fees and other penalties, as well as the balance due in total. The original loan amount was $22 million. The balance due has reportedly been increasing at a rate of more than $8,500 per day.
In asking the court to deny the motion, Ramco argues that Computershare has not shown sufficient grounds for the appointment of a receiver. It is also arguing that Computershare has no standing to sue them, because they haven’t shown that they are “the proper holder of the Note and Mortgage,” and that they haven’t demonstrated that they have a reasonable probability of winning the foreclosure action.
“A party cannot demonstrate a reasonable probability of prevailing in a foreclosure action if it lacks standing to bring one,” Kaplan argued.
In the event the judge is inclined to approve a receiver, Ramco said, it asked the court to defer its ruling for 60 days to allow the West Sub settlement to conclude and asked that a larger bond of $2,000,000 be required of Computershare, as well as a reduction in the receiver’s proposed fees.
However, it’s not certain that the West Sub settlement will in fact conclude any time soon.
Both Prasad and the principal of a medical services consultant he hired to run West Sub’s emergency room operation, S & T Consulting and Management, have filed separate motions to intervene in the West Sub lawsuit pitting Prasad and Resilience Healthcare against Patlola and Ramco. Complicating matters is the fact that Prasad holds a 60% stake in Resilience while Patlola holds 40%.
Ramco has a week to respond to the motions to intervene in the West Sub case. Judge Patrick Stanton set a court hearing on the matter for Aug. 25.
In its River Forest campus filing, Ramco alluded several times to the harm being inflicted on people who formerly relied on West Sub, including a footnote referring to a Chicago Sun-Times article titled, “Where do they go? What West Side patients face after their hospital closes.”
That Sun-Times article was subsequently republished by Wednesday Journal.
“The stakes of disrupting the Global Settlement extend well beyond the private interests of the parties to this action,” Kaplan wrote.
Ramco made note of Insight Hospital’s “contemplated assumption of control” of West Sub in a possible settlement, outlined the proposed settlement between Ramco and Resilience in detail, and said the appointment of a receiver to take over management of the River Forest properties would put that all at risk.
Under terms of the proposed settlement in the West Sub case, which has been disclosed in recent court filings, the corporate entity that Prasad uses to control Resilience Healthcare, AUM, LLC, will be immediately sold to Insight for $1, giving Insight control over all properties and operations.
That, Ramco argues, would hand full authority over to an entity that has “no role in, connection to or understanding of the Global Settlement.”