Photo by: Rick Danzl/The News-Gazette The houses at 609 W Stoughton, left, and 611 W Stoughton in Urbana Monday August 1, 2016.

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A University of Illinois physician who was ordered to pay $242,400 in damages for parking his car in his Urbana neighbor’s driveway for 12 years has won a huge legal victory.

A state appeals court late last week unanimously overturned the judgment obtained by Ross and Leslie McNeil against Dr. Milorad Ketchens, a move that is likely to bring a long-running legal battle to an abrupt halt. The appellate court’s decision also is expected to pull the plug on Ketchens’ March bankruptcy filing in which he sought to have almost all of the judgment discharged.

The three-judge appellate court panel, which heard oral arguments in the case on July 13, issued a July 29 ruling in which it did not rule on the merits of the case. Instead, it threw out the judgment against Ketchens on the grounds of res judicata, a legal doctrine barring continued litigation of a case involving the same issues and the same parties as one previously adjudicated.

Writing for the court, Justice John Turner concluded that the McNeils should have filed their trespass claim against Ketchens in their original 1998 litigation over the driveway instead of waiting until 2010.

“Nothing in the law prevented the McNeils from joining a trespass complaint in their (1998 litigation). ... The trial court ... could have determined who had superior title, if a trespass occurred and compensatory and punitive damages for the trespass. We find there is identity of a cause of action in the two cases that bars the McNeils from recovery under the theory of res judicata,” Turner wrote.

He was joined in the decision by Justices John Knetch and Thomas Harris Jr.

Perhaps the best explanation of res judicata in layman’s terms is that a litigant gets one bite of the apple in pursuing relief. A more lawyerly description is that the doctrine of res judicata “bars not only what was decided in the first action, but whatever could have been decided.”

Fred Grosser, the Urbana lawyer representing the McNeils, described the appellate court ruling as “pretty discouraging.” He said he plans to ask the Illinois Supreme Court to review the decision but acknowledged the high court hears very few appeal requests.

“Chances are at about 5 percent” the high court will review the appellate court decision, he said.

William Hardy, the Springfield lawyer who represents Ketchens on appeal, was predictably satisfied.

“Obviously, we’re very pleased with the decision. We thought long ago that the trespassing claim should have been included in the original complaint,” he said.

Like Grosser, Hardy also was doubtful about the prospects of a Supreme Court review.

“I don’t think this decision sets any new precedent” the high court would want to examine, he said.

Although the driveway dispute raises complicated land issues, its genesis lies in a simple concept covered by the Ten Commandments — thou shalt not covet.

Dr. Ketchens, who lives at 613 W. Stoughton St., U, coveted the driveway owned by the McNeils, who live at 609 W. Stoughton St., U. Testimony in the civil trial indicated that Ketchens wanted the property so he could trade it to the owner of the residence at 611 W. Stoughton, U, a move that would have allowed him to extend his side yard.

After researching property records, Dr. Ketchens discovered the McNeils’ driveway was not included in the legal description of the McNeils’ property, a mistake believed to be the result of a scrivener’s error decades earlier. As a consequence, Dr. Ketchens paid a local lawyer, the late Wendel Winkelmann, to draft a deed transferring ownership of the driveway to Ketchens. The move is, for some reason, legally permissible but still invalid.

Dr. Ketchens also paid the negligible property taxes on the driveway, known in court documents as Tract A. Those two moves gave Dr. Ketchens a colorable claim to the McNeils’ driveway. So when he parked his car there in 1998 and refused to move it, Urbana police took no action other than to urge the McNeils to go to court.

They did so in 1998, ultimately winning a ruling on appeal that gave them ownership of the driveway on the legal theory of adverse possession — the land was perceived to be a part of the McNeil’s property for so long that it had, in fact, become part of the McNeil’s property.

After that ruling, the McNeils filed a trespassing lawsuit against Ketchens, seeking actual damages for the loss of the driveway for 12 years and punitive damages for the toll his actions took on their marriage and their family.

Circuit Judge Jeffrey Ford ultimately awarded $2,400 in actual damages and another $240,000 in punitive damages.

Ford said the Ketchens’ conduct “shocked the conscience” of the court because he subjected the McNeils to a “legal nightmare” while at the same time harassing the McNeils in a way that “became the equivalent of a stalking situation.”

He noted Dr. Ketchens constantly watched and videotaped the McNeils and called the police on them. As a consequence, the McNeils stopped using the front part of their residence in an effort to avoid contact with Dr. Ketchens, stopped inviting people over and abandoned hopes of selling their house so that Mrs. McNeil could use her doctorate in physiology to seek employment elsewhere.

The McNeils testified the dispute took a toll on their marriage, Judge Ford concluding that “it is hard to believe that (Dr. Ketchens) could not realize the totality of his actions could affect (the McNeils) as it did.”

Once Ford issued his $242,400 judgment, however, the tide turned. The McNeils were able to garnish Dr. Ketchens’ UI wages, to the point that Dr. Ketchens filed for reorganization of his debts in federal bankruptcy court.

If the appellate court ruling stands, the bankruptcy case as well as the civil trespass case is over, and Dr. Ketchens owes the McNeils nothing. However, legal filing indicates Dr. Ketchens has paid a small fortune to the lawyers representing him.

Court record indicate he still owes $32,982 to Champaign lawyer Mike Tague for representing him in the initial trespass case. Dr. Ketchens paid Hardy, the Springfield lawyer who handled the appeal, roughly $30,000 initially and owes him another $49,940. Ketchens’ bankruptcy lawyer, Brett Kepley, said he has been paid $1,500 and is owed another $2,000 by Dr. Ketchens.

Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached by email at jdey@news-gazette.com or at (217) 351-5369.