PEORIA — The city of Peoria spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, including paying one attorney more than $1,000 an hour, on a new law firm it hired to help draft a lawsuit and settlement with the Par-A-Dice Casino.
Peoria hired the law firm Taft, Stettinus and Hollister, replacing the law firm of Elias, Meginnes and Seghetti, late last year to assist in both simultaneously drafting a settlement agreement with Boyd Gaming and drawing up a lawsuit against the company that operates the casino in East Peoria.
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees paid to the firm, Peoria was left with neither a settlement agreement or successful lawsuit after the Peoria City Council moved to reject a settlement, leading Boyd Gaming to switch plans for a casino on a barge, making a lawsuit null and void as well.
According to invoices billed to the city by Taft, Stettinus and Hollister, which were obtained by the Journal Star via the Freedom of Information Act, Peoria paid $395,475.97 to the law firm for services rendered between December 2025 and February 2026.
When combined with the money paid to Elias, Meginnes and Seghetti, Peoria spent more than $500,000 on legal fees in an ill-fated quest to lure a land-based casino to the city.
Peoria hired Elias, Meginnes and Seghetti in December 2024 at an hourly rate of $395, but decided last year to transition to Taft, Stettinus and Hollister, which commanded a much higher rate, because of the firm’s expertise in handling gaming matters, according to City Manager Patrich Urich.
“I think that the firm represented us very well, and from the perspective of where we were in the process they stepped in and certainly helped to represent us and provided us with very solid legal advice and we were prepared, and I think the work that was done with the firm to prepare for litigation clearly positioned us in a way that we felt very good about our case,” Urich said. “Clearly, there was no interest on the part of anyone to litigate.”
Peoria paid 13 different attorneys and paralegals from Taft, Stettinus and Hollister to work for them. Their hourly rates ranged from $295 an hour at the low end for paralegals to $1,130 an hour to firm partners who worked with the city.
In total, Taft, Stettinus and Hollister billed the city of Peoria for 560 hours of work between Dec. 3 of last year through Feb. 26 of this year, according to the invoices.
Taft, Stettinus and Hollister helped Peoria draft a settlement agreement with Boyd Gaming that would have allowed Boyd to build what Peoria contended was a land-based casino in East Peoria if the company paid Peoria an estimated $1.8 million a year in return. A 1991 intergovernmental agreement between Peoria and East Peoria dictated that any land-based casino needed to be built in Peoria.
The Peoria City Council rejected that settlement offer, however, in a 5-5 split vote and instead opted to pursue a lawsuit, which Taft, Stettinus and Hollister drafted along with Peoria’s in-house attorneys.
Rather than deal with any litigation, however, Boyd Gaming scrapped its original plans to construct a casino building on land and instead pivoted to a plan to build a casino on a barge on the Illinois River.
Boyd Gaming now is moving ahead with plans to build a $160 million casino on a barge on the Illinois River, located where the current riverboat sits. Plans for that new casino were approved by the Illinois Gaming Board in February.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Why Peoria hired a new, more expensive law firm in fight for casino
Reporting by JJ Bullock, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
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