EAST CLEVELAND TATTLER

Issue Number 17, J

ul
y 2012
Jul
uly

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WHY DIDNT CLEVELAND CLINIC LA
BOARD?
COSGRO
REPORTT COSGR
LAWYER

CLEVELAND CLINIC CEO

GANGSTERED CLOSING

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By CLYDE CLODHOPPER
East Cleveland Tattlers ongoing investigation
and review of public records tied to the secret and
fraudulent agreement Cleveland Clinic CEO &
President Delos Toby Cosgrove signed with
Mayor Gary Norton without any public meetings
or discussions confirms that East Clevelands
council president and vice president had written
letters demanding answers and requesting a
special meeting to discuss rumors that the mayor
had struck an agreement in violation of a
resolution which said the city did not support
Huron Hospitals scheduled closing.
The letters confirm that language in the June
29, 2011 agreement Cosgrove and Norton signed
which claimed that East Cleveland and its
officers supported the deal theyd cut was an
outright, fraudulent lie.
Records show that on June 21, 2011 council
unanimously approved a resolution expressing
the citys lack of support for Cleveland Clinics
plan to close Huron Hospital, which effectively

Council President Joy Jordan and Vice President

Chantelle Lewis said Norton used an email to inform
them of a meeting he had scheduled to discuss the
Huron Hospital closing and told them they could either show up or not. The Plain Dealer has had access to all of the public records that could have exposed the crooked deal but covered it up by reporting only what reporter Ellen Kleinerman was told.

barred Norton from negotiating or signing any

agreement with Cosgrove.
What council and East Cleveland residents
didnt know was that Norton was already holding
secret discussions and negotiations with
Cosgrove to give him what Cleveland Clinic and
its board wanted.
On June 24, 2011 Council President Joy Jordan
sent a letter to Norton asking him to put to rest
rumors that Huron Road Hospital will be
demolished by November 2012 and specifically
asked if his administration had discussed the
subject of demolition with hospital officials. She
also wanted to know if he had made a commitment to issue a demolition permit, and if he had
already issued one, and told him to respond by
June 27.
Norton ignored her questions, and instead
scheduled an informal June 27 meeting to discuss
Huron Hospital. He had his secretary leave voice
mail messages with council members.
After receiving Belinda Kyles voice mail
message, Lewis sent Norton an email and told
him that he needed to schedule a formal special
meeting of council which would have allowed the
public to participate in the discussions. East
Clevelands charter and Ohio law imposes
specific duties on elected officials to discuss and
decide public business in public, and not in secret
as he was doing with Cosgrove, law director Ron
Riley, ex-finance director Ron Brooks and other
public employees who were following his orders
and not the law.
Norton ignored Lewis special meeting request
and only commented on one portion of her
message to him. He told her the unauthorized
meeting he was holding was scheduled for 5:30
and not 5 p.m.
Council chose not to attend the unauthorized
meeting and two days later, on June 29, Cosgrove
and Norton held a joint news conference where
they fraudulently and publicly proclaimed that

Capo di Tutti Capi

Delos Cosgrove

ShysterDan Rowan

This future prison

bitch needs no
introduction

Shyster Ron Riley

COSGROVE ACTED LIKE A MOB BOSS. Delos

Cosgroves secret dealings with Gary Norton
raises questions about his business ethics that
Cleveland Clinics board needs to answer. The
board should also question whether chief legal counsel Dan Rowan represents the organization or Cosgrove just like East Cleveland city
council has learned that Ron Riley will manipulate opinions to benefit Norton. If Cosgrove, a
highly sophisticated and educated CEO & President of a major institution, will cut illegal side
deals with corrupt politicians like Norton, what
other deals has he cut behind the backs of the
board and corporate officers he serves? The
Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association has no
other choice but to investigate and bring disciplinary charges against Rowan and Riley when,
not if, investigators confirm that both lawyers
failed to advise their clients not to enter a
fraudulent agreement that claimed council was
on board when public records they each ignored showed they were not. Watch Cosgrove
and Rowan dump everything on Lying Azz Gary,
Riley and Ron Brooks.

East Cleveland and Cleveland Clinic had

reached an agreement that no one but the two of
them and the employees they supervised had
seen.
The agreement Norton signed stated that East
Cleveland waived any rights to a claim or
defense that the cooperation agreement was
voided under any part of the citys charter or
Ohio law, and further signed that he was
authorized to sign it when hed been given no
authority by council to negotiate and execute the
agreement hed signed with Cosgrove in secret.
According to an Ohio Supreme Court decision
entitled Frisbie Co. v. East Cleveland, 1918,
which became the standard for how public
business is conducted in this state and has been
repeatedly upheld by the states courts, the
agreement Cosgrove and Norton signed isnt
worth the paper its written on.
The Frisbie ruling was based on a contract the
company entered with the Village of East

EAST CLEVELAND TA
TTLER, NO
Y 2012
TATTLER,
NO.. 17, JUL
JULY

MORE RELIABLE THAN THE PLAIN DEALER

Cleveland Clinic once used bribery to swing a deal

Cleveland in 1901 to install water mains on three
parcels of property it owned where houses were
being built near Doan Avenue in what was known
as both the Doan and Frisbie allotments. Village
trustees agreed to pay the company 10 percent of
the proceeds of revenue charged for water when
the amount reached the cost of construction.
Frisbie paid for the materials and supplies and
performed the work because the business owners
told the citys politicians that they were the only
company qualified to perform the work. The
problem, however, came when the work exceeded
the $500 threshhold state law imposed on
municipal governments for seeking public bids.
The company sued in 1915 when East
Cleveland by then had become a city. They won
in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
but the decision was reversed by the county
appellate court. Frisbie took the case to the
Supreme Court of Ohio who justices affirmed the
appellate courts decision and issued a strong
warning to contractors and others seeking to
engage in business with municipal governments.
Persons who deal with municipal bodies for
their own profit should be required at their peril
to take notice of limitations upon the powers of
these bodies which these statutes impose.
Throughout the next 90 plus years the Frisbie
decision has been consistently upheld in Ohio
courts and was further explained in, Accutemp,
Inc. v. Longview State Hosp.10 Ohio App.3d 223,
226-27, 461 N.E.2d 905 (1983)
We think there is no hardship in requiring
them, and all other parties who undertake to deal
with a municipal body in respect of public
improvements, to investigate the subject and
ascertain at their peril whether the preliminary
steps leading up to [the] contract and prescribed
by statute have been taken. No high degree of
vigilance is required of persons thus situated to
learn the facts. They are dealing with public
agencies whose powers are defined by law, and
whose acts are public transactions, and they
should be charged with knowledge of both. If the
preliminary steps necessary to legalize a
contract, have not been taken, they can withdraw
from the transaction altogether, or delay until the
steps are taken. An occasional hardship may
accrue to one who negligently fails to ascertain
the authority vested in public agencies with
whom he deals. In such instances, the loss should
be ascribed to its true cause, the want of

vigilance on the part of the sufferer, and statutes

designed to protect the public should not be
annulled for his benefit.
Council attorney Darryl Pittman said the
Cosgrove-Norton agreement is not legal or
binding upon the city. He took aggressive issue
with a clause which literally said that even if
Norton didnt have the authority, the agreement
superceded Ohio law and the citys charter.
Cosgrove told resident Ike Jenkins in an email
that they demolished Huron Hospital because
thats what Norton wanted, but that admission
doesnt obviate the corporations duties to have
complied with instead of seeking a way around
having a public discussion with East Cleveland
council and the citys residents.
Media and government expert Jon Davis said
Cosgroves email sounds more like the beginning
of a story-line thats shaping up to make Norton
the fall guy for his dirty deal.
Gary is too young to remember late Cleveland
councilman James Boyd when he was indicted in
1977 for seeking and accepting a $20,000 bribe
from Dr. Carl Wasmuth who, like Cosgrove, was
Cleveland Clinics chairman, Davis said.
Wasmuth, H.R. Taylor, Willis McFarlane and
Walter Kirkman were trying to get the Park Plaza
Hotel built at 95th and Carnegie Avenue and
Boyd was paid a bribe to stop voicing his public
opposition to the project, and to sponsor zoning
legislation that would allow the development to
move forward.
Davis said the comparisons between Boyd,
Norton, Wasmuth and Cosgrove are eeriily
similar. Like Boyd, Norton blasted Cosgroves
closing plans less than four weeks before he shut
up and negotiated his secret deal with him.
After an audit of Cleveland Clinic records
revealed the $20,000 expense, Wasmuth admitted
that it was a pay-off Boyd and then turned over
evidence to late prosecutor John T. Corrigan to
cut a deal and save himself from prosecution.
Clevelands African American community was
infuriated because Boyd was the only person
Corrigan indicted and convicted.
Davis said one significant difference between
Boyd and Norton is that the late councilman was
known to be an advocate for African Americans
while Norton just uses them.
There will be no rally to save Gary when
Cosgrove rolls on his ass, Davis said. Hell be
hung out to dry once investigators begin looking

Did Cleveland Clinics board know and will they fire Cosgrove and Rowan if
they didnt? More importantly, what will they do to make East Cleveland whole?

Patrick
McCartan

Morry
Weiss

Robert
Rich

Joseph
Hahn

Mario
Morino

Larry
Pollock

Umberto
Fedelli

Sam
Miller

Patrick Thomas Joseph Frederick

Auletta Commes Scaminace Nance

William
Timken

Norma
Lerner

William William Beth E. Carole F. David J. Cynthia

MacDonald MacDonald Mooney Hoover Hessler Deyling

The black guy always

takes the fall. Late
Cleveland Councilman
James Boyd was the
only person indicted
and convicted after
late Cleveland Clinic
CEO Carl Wasmuth
gave him a $20,000
bribe in 1977. The
Plain Dealer didnt
even mention the
white guys by name.

at his and Cosgroves secret transaction and the

big guy will get off and his little ass will become
a prison bitch. If I were Gary Id hold a press
conference as soon as I finish reading the Tattler
and start talking before Cosgrove points more
fingers at him. The biggest gangsters in town are
guys in $1500 suits who sit on boards and pay-off
everyone from prosecutors and judges to high
level FBI special agents.
Davis said Nortons own stupidity and
arrogance will be his undoing because of petty
ego-trippers Mike Smedley who has bragged that
theyll have $50,000 to run candidates against
council for opposing Nortons unlawful deals.
Davis said losers like Norton and Smedley cant
raise that kind of money on their own without
someone higher ups involvement.
Davis also criticized Cosgrove, saying
Cleveland Clinics CEOs seem to have been cut
from the mold of arrogant pricks.
Cosgrove was flippantly arrogant when he told
Mayor Frank Jackson and East Cleveland
residents and officials who opposed the closing
that their opposition didnt matter and that Huron
Hospital would close anyway. In comparison,
Wasmuth told his African American critics to
move if they didnt like the Clinics expansion
plans. Davis said he gave them a nigger
offering by building a couple of playgrounds.
These self-serving, greedy, racist and elitist
assholes are not good or honorable people,
Davis said.

Councilman Bak
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Baker
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Newly-appointed Ward 4 councilman
Mansell Baker came out swinging against
Mayor Gary Nortons wasteful
spending habits and outright
violation of a resolution
council passed in 2008 that did
not authorize city vehicles to be
taken home without council
approval as gas costs exceeded
$3 a gallon, and when the
mayor was council pesident.
Baker said employees like
Collette Clinkscales, cop James Mansell Baker
Ruth and others are not using
the vehicles for city business when they take
them home and do not have council approval
regardless of Nortons unlawful authorization
for them to do so. Baker has assumed control
over the health and safety committee and said
he plans to use it to investigate abuses and hold
offending employees accountable.