Chicago Personal Injury Law Firm, Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates Files Lawsuit Against the CTA Claiming Several Privacy Laws Violated

Horwitz Horwitz and Associates - April 21, 2014

According to a lawsuit filed by Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is being charged with secretly filming at least five employees – both men and women – in areas where they can change from their street clothes into their work clothes. The suit claims that privacy laws were violated. CTA managers admit to the cameras and have removed them since this illegal practice came to light.

CBS reported on the story earlier last October, where they obtained video from a room inside a CTA facility on the Orange Line near Midway Airport. The footage that CBS obtained is from the same room that the CTA says it took, “video of employees sleeping and sitting around doing nothing.”
Clifford Horwitz, lead trial attorney at Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates, represents the union employees fighting disciplinary action brought against them by the CTA from the video footage. The cameras were placed in what appears to be a room with two desks, a microwave, refrigerator and lockers.
The CTA claims it installed these cameras in “maintenance storage rooms” on the Orange Line and at the Lake/Harlem maintenance area on the West Side. “Well, you can call them whatever you want. They are changing rooms, and they’ve been changing rooms,” said attorney Horwitz.
“You cannot put any video recording device in a locker room, washroom, or a changing room,” said Perry Myers, a veteran private investigator who routinely installs similar cameras.
During an interview with CBS, Clifford Horwitz stated, “Some of these people have never done a thing wrong. Not one thing wrong and they have been given the most grievous penalty: loss of career, loss of pension, loss of medical benefits. This is devastating.”
Mr. Horwitz went on to say, “You would hope with this having been on CBS, that this would have prompted the CTA to review its past practice on how to gather information on its employees.”
The lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by the five employees, alleging hidden cameras were installed in the electrical room at the Harlem/Lake station in Forest Park and other locations during or before September 2013 and that the CTA officials took no steps to protect employees’ privacy by making sure the cameras were not filming the locker areas where employees routinely changed.