EAST ST. LOUIS – U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Beatty recused himself from a case about cracks in a church where family member Steven Beatty tended the flock.
The judge didn’t give a reason for recusal, but an obituary notice from 2019 listed him and Steven as grandchildren of Dorothy Beatty of Edwardsville.
Their grandfather U.S. district judge William Beatty died in 2001.
The case comes from Ridgway, where Steven Beatty served as pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church at the eastern edge of the Belleville diocese.
A tornado destroyed the church in 2012, but spared the altar.
Consolidation of four Gallatin County parishes followed.
The resulting parish took the name of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, “lily of the Mohawks,” on the date of her canonization as a saint of the church.
The parish hired Cram and Ferguson Architects, a Massachusetts firm that started in 1895, to design a new church with the old altar.
Construction began in 2014 and ended in 2015.
This February, Melissa Meirink of Mathis, Marifian and Richter in Belleville sued Cram and Ferguson in Gallatin County circuit court on behalf of the parish.
The suit claims improper design and defective construction caused foundation settlement and undermining.
“After construction was completed, the church building began to exhibit both interior and exterior cracking,” the suit claims.
Cracks allegedly grew wider and St. Kateri hired Acura Engineering to inspect the building.
According to the suit, Acura concluded that the basement foundation wasn’t sufficient to carry the weight of the building’s front portion.
Acura found poor surface drainage and a lack of underground collection pipes for the downspout. It also found sump pumps continually tried to lower the natural water table and might have removed sediment with the water.
Acura recommended six to 12 months of monitoring prior to recommendation of corrective action.
The suit claims that St. Kateri engaged Morley and Associates architects who advised that an engineer designed a waterproof tub structure for the basement.
Cram and Ferguson designed a structure that wasn’t a tub but would use pumps to keep the basement dry.
The pumps allegedly pushed out dirt and fine soil with water, compacting sand and causing settlement.
“The church building has not yet fully stabilized despite remediation efforts and therefore additional future repairs are necessary,” the suit claims.
Costs are estimated between $300,000 and $500,000.
Cram and Ferguson counsel Katherine Jones of Chicago removed the suit to district court on March 8, on the basis of diverse citizenship.
Jones moved to dismiss it on March 15, stating a statute of limitations on construction ran out in four years.
“By September 2017 at the latest, St. Kateri had enough information in its possession of the cracking and settling of the building to inquire whether its alleged injury was wrongfully caused,” Jones wrote.
The clerk randomly assigned Magistrate Judge Beatty.
After his recusal the clerk randomly assigned District Judge Staci Yandle.