Attorney who fought the good fight for city retirees dies at 74

By  Fran Spielman

Feb 8, 2024, 8:30pm EST, Chicago Sun Times

Clint Krislov crusaded against the widely-despised Chicago parking meter deal, fought for retired city workers whose benefits had been stripped away by a cost-cutting mayor and championed consumer causes.

Clint Krislov spent a lifetime tilting at windmills — legal, political and medical.

As an attorney, he crusaded against the widely-despised Chicago parking meter deal, fought for retired city workers whose benefits had been stripped away by a cost-cutting mayor and championed the cause of consumers treated badly by callous corporations.

His political crusades were equally quixotic.

He ran for office six times — against such Democratic political powerhouses as U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan — and never once got elected.

But the medical mountain was his highest climb.

Over 21 years, he endured four types of cancer — kidney, skin, lung and pancreatic — valiantly and quietly, to avoid giving his legal adversaries an inch.

Mr. Krislov, 74, died last week at his home in Wilmette after a seven-year fight against pancreatic cancer.

His body will be donated to the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois so students at Chicago area medical schools can utilize it for research, training and education.

Although he concealed his own cancer diagnosis, Mr. Krislov credited his rigorous physical fitness regimen and the annual cancer screenings he underwent since his 2003 diagnosis with kidney cancer for keeping him alive for 21 years.

On weekdays, he climbed 40 flights of stairs on his way to lunch and tried to do it faster every day thereafter. On weekends, he got in a mile-long swim, jogged and biked the Green Bay Trail and, ran 5K and 10K races with his three children years after completing the Chicago Marathon twice.

Daughter Carson Quinn recalled how proud her dad was about having taught his kids to ski. The slopes also gave birth to the nickname that lives on with his grandchildren, thanks to the warning system used to space out skiers at the top of the run.

“When you push off, it would go, `beep, beep beep.’ And he just loved that. So we called him, ‘Beep.’ Right now, he has three grandchildren and probably some more to come and they will always know him as `Beep,’ and there’s no one else like ‘Beep,’” his daughter said.

“He was thoughtful, clever and creative, with an encyclopedic brain. You could ask him anything ... He bought every textbook that we had so he could help us with our homework. He wanted to be so involved in our lives,” his daughter said.

Dale Krislov, his wife of 45 years, was a 50-year veteran flight attendant with an enduring love of travel. She had to work to convince her workaholic husband to accompany her on trips around the world.

“He’d go, saying, ‘I could just read about this.’ But when we’d land at the destination, he would love the activities and the experience and he wouldn’t want to leave. Then he’d get home and tell everyone about it for weeks and months,” Dale Krislov said.

Her husband wanted to keep his illness quiet. He told her “‘the minute somebody finds out you have pancreatic cancer, they pick up the phone and call a different lawyer. People assume you’re going to die within a couple of months,’” she said.

“He had the surgery, had it symptom-free for four years and then, his blood levels started going up and they put him on chemo. And even when he had chemo, he would bike 20 miles to Highland Park. He would swim a mile at the Northwestern pool. ... He was just determined that he was going to live. He loved life. Loved practicing law.”

Jerry Slavin,84, (left) leaves court with attorney Clint Krislov after reaching an agreement to share Cub playoff tickets with two men who had sued Slavin for them.

Mr. Krislov was born in Shaker Heights, an affluent Cleveland suburb. His father was an attorney. His mother was a homemaker who “kept her typing license” in case she needed to get a job.

After graduating from Northwestern University in 1971, he got his law degree from Cornell, then passed the bar exam in Illinois and Michigan.

His start as an anti-City Hall crusader came in 1983. He sued the city, accusing it of delaying state-mandated payments to city employee pension funds so it could invest the money instead and pocket the interest. The city was ordered to replenish the pension funds to the tune of $35 million.

That was followed by the long-running retiree health care saga that continues to this day and already has resulted in continued coverage and back payments for scores of retirees who had been left out in the cold.

“I told him many times, ‘Don’t break your law firm for this.’ But he wasn’t gonna back off at any cost,” said Tony Gvozdenovich, a retired Chicago police officer and among the many who benefited from Mr. Krislov’s help.

“It was something deep inside and personal. That case was like a child to him. It was born with him and he was not gonna give it up, no matter how many setbacks there were.”

City retirees “lost a true advocate who will never be forgotten,” said another retired officer, Rosemarie Giambalvo. “Clint was a crusading attorney who made a career out of fighting City Hall on behalf of pensioners and retirees.”

In 2017, Mr. Krislov and the retired city employees he represented vented their anger against what they called a “heartless” email written by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel about phasing out the city’s retiree health care program.

Emanuel bragged at the time: “Thank you very much. A $175 million saving!”

At the time, Mr, Krislov branded Emanuel’s snide reply “Trump-like” and “narcissistic,” accusing the “heartless” mayor of “taking pride in harming people.”

“He just hated injustices. … He really loved finding out about these terrible things that people were doing and trying to correct them,” Dale Krislov said.

In subsequent crusades, Mr. Krislov tried to void deals to lease the city’s the parking meter and sell four underground garages on grounds that the city can’t legally sell the public way.

Both lawsuits were thrown out.

“I hate the term ‘fought the good fight’ because it always means you lost. But we’ve fought some really unfortunate deals that the city got itself into,” Krislov once said.

Krislov’s battles on behalf of consumers won refunds for African American hair salon customers charged higher prices for so-called “ethnic” services and prison inmates overcharged at a state prison commissary.

His class-action lawsuits benefited dishwasher owners victimized by a defective switch blamed for causing fires, Sharper Image gift card holders given less priority than general business creditors after the company declared bankruptcy and family members who donated their loved ones bodies only to have those remains mishandled and sold.

But it was the crusade for his own children that his daughter Taylor Shanfeld will remember most.

“He believed in us and loved us every step of the way and I felt that. From helping to pep me up as Marie Curie in a third-grade presentation to helping me prepare for my favorite job interview with a large financial institution to calming me down as a first-time mom a few days after bringing our little one home, he was always there. We knew that and we felt his love for us in whatever we did,” Taylor Shanfeld said.

Other survivors include his son, Nick Krislov; sons-in-law Brian Shanfeld and Casey Quinn; grandchildren Sawyer, Barnes and Sophie; and brother Alex Krislov. Maureen Krislov, a twin sister, died in July.

A celebration of life is planned.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/obituaries/2024/2/8/24066600/clink-krislov-obituary-attorney-dies-chicago-city-employees-retiree-health-care-parking-mete