Articles Posted in Business Disputes

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Worldwide, the impact of global change is being felt. While some people deny that climate change is even happening, the courts are, in fact, seeing the effects in the litigation scene. Suits concerning the issue are trending upwards. Jurisdictional restraints and distance are not stopping litigants from coming forward to file suit. Science, damages, and people being passionate about the cause have increased the number of people wanting to seek retribution, restraint or some form of way to mend harm done by being awarded damages and the cutting of carbon emissions. The biggest offenders? Large corporations. The Human Rights Commission in London is currently investigating the catastrophic effects of Typhoon Yolanda which affected those in the Philippines. The nexus between the polluting corporations with the effects on the environment is what will need to be established and whether the condition was exacerbated as a result of that pollution. The difficulty in being able to produce evidence to present this case and the distance of greater than six thousand miles is no bar.

One possible reason for the increase in lawsuits is the lack of response from governance. People are also more environmentally conscious and know of the impacts of gas emissions
when it comes to health, land and air quality. Successful litigation in this realm has not been as successful as environmentalists would like. However, the pendulum is shifting. Public
awareness and better-equipped machines with techniques to track results also tie in with that. A worldwide consensus is now there when it comes to damage. It is proving that a single
corporation is responsible and to what degree used to be more difficult than it is now. We also know that from a few prior posts on our blog, those actions have started in the USA
also. We discussed this when we looked at a suburban business in Chicago that is under scrutiny for implementation of a system in which the way they sterilized caused emissions of
a cancer-causing substance. The operational facility provided sterilization services to the medical, pharmaceutical and food industries. Ironically, the health damage by its emissions made locals
worse off. Continue reading ›

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After a surgery went horribly awry at a private surgical center, and the center was sued by the patient, it could not recover the full amount of judgment against it from its insurer an appellate court found. The court found that the surgery center had urged its insurer, who was defending it in the patient’s lawsuit, not to settle, as it believed its case to be highly defensible. Because of this, the panel found that the insurer had behaved appropriately even though it eventually lost and the jury awarded damages that were more than quintuple the surgical center’s policy limit.

Surgery Center at 900 North Michigan Avenue, LLC is an outpatient surgical center that permits outside physicians to perform day surgery at its facility. American Physicians Assurance Corporation, Inc. is a medical malpractice insurance company that insured Surgery Center. The insurance policy that Surgery Center purchased from APA limited APA’s liability to $1 million per claim and provided that APA would defend and indemnify Surgery Center for claims that fell within the policy’s coverage. Continue reading ›

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A class action lawsuit recently filed in a federal court in Washington accuses Getty Images, Inc. (“Getty”) of allegedly duping customers into paying for fictitious copyright licenses for images in the public domain that can be used freely.

The plaintiff in the case, Texas digital marketing company CixxFive Concepts LLC, claims that it was one of the victim’s of Getty’s wrongful conduct and alleges that Getty’s actions violated the RICO Act and state consumer protection laws. The wrongful conduct, according to the complaint, was not merely charging for the public domain images but rather deceiving customers into believing they needed to buy licenses for access to those images and purporting to restrict the use of those public domain images. The complaint concedes that “charging for public domain images is not illegal by itself,” but goes on to allege that “Getty’s and/or Getty US’s conduct goes much further than this… Using a number of different deceptive techniques, Getty and/or Getty US misleads its customers and potential customers into believing that it or one of its third-party contributors owns the copyright to all of the images available on its website, and that a license from Getty and/or Getty US is required to use all of the images on its website [when] [i]n truth, anyone is free to use public domain images, without restriction, and by definition in a non-exclusive manner, without paying Getty and/or Getty US or anyone else a penny.”

The complaint goes on to allege that “Getty and/or Getty US purport to restrict the use of the public domain images to a limited time, place, and/or purpose, and purport to guarantee exclusivity in the use of public domain images,” and that Getty’s license agreement currently “prohibits the use of licensed public domain works in on-demand products, such as ‘postcards, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, posters, screensavers or wallpapers,’ or in electronic templates, such as ‘website templates, business card templates, electronic greeting card templates, and brochure design templates.’” This conduct, the complaint alleges “deceptively purports to restrict the licensee’s preexisting right to free and unfettered use of public domain images.”

To add insult to injury, the complaint also alleges that Getty (through a company License Compliance Services, Inc. (“LCS”) which the complaint alleges Getty owns or controls) regularly sends copyright infringement letters to businesses using public domain images online “accusing them of infringing copyrights in public domain images.” The complaint gives an example alleging that “LCS sent a letter to Carol Highsmith, the noted American photographer who has donated tens of thousands of images to the Library of Congress, accusing her nonprofit foundation of copyright infringement for using one of her own public domain images.”

The lawsuit seeks to represent all licensees who have paid Getty for public domain images and seeks to recover treble damages, costs and attorney’s fees as well as an injunctive relief preventing Getty from “wielding a false claim of ownership of over intellectual property that is rightfully in the public domain.”

A copy of the complaint against Getty can be obtained here. Continue reading ›

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Our longtime co-counsel and colleague Dmitry Feofanov argued an important case this week before the Illinois Supreme Court concerning a consumer’s ability to revoke acceptance of a brand new RV with a hidden defect — a leaky roof.  The consumers revoked acceptance after the RV dealer couldn’t provide an estimated completion date for the repairs. An RV is a summer product and the consumers feared (correctly) that they would lose the use of the RV which is a summer product for the entire summer if they did not revoke acceptance.  The trial and appellate courts ruled that the consumers should have given the dealer the opportunity to repair the RV. We filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court on behalf of the National Association of Consumer Advocates supporting the position that a consumer or buyer of goods does not have to provide an opportunity to cure for a material defect as material defect undercuts the value of the product to the buyer and can revoke acceptance.

You can also listen to the oral argument below.

Continue reading ›

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Our clients give us 5-star reviews for winning judgments or obtaining favorable settlements for them in used car fraud cases where they could have lost 10s of thousands of dollars:
****** 6 weeks ago
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Where an asset purchase agreement between two companies did not contemplate the forfeiture of an entire reserve payment as a result of an audit of assets taking one month longer than originally contemplated, and such a forfeiture would result in a windfall for one of the parties.

ARC Welding Supply Co. was a distributor of compressed gases and welding supplies in Vincennes, Indiana. As part of an asset purchase agreement American Welding & Gas, Inc. paid ARC $1,534,796.06 for ARC’s assets, of which the primary assets where its asset cylinders. Some cylinders were already rented to ARC’s clients, so determining the number of asset cylinders that could be transferred from ARC to American was difficult. As a result, American withheld $150,000 for 180 days to protect against a shortage of up to 1,200 out of a potential 6,500 cylinders.

American conducted an audit of the number of cylinders, beginning with those at ARC’s facility, and then those that were rented to existing clients. American did not visit every client, only those for whom rental records could not clearly indicate the number of cylinders in the client’s possession. The agreement originally specified that settlement would occur on or before April 15, 2015. Ron Adkins, American’s President, and CEO, informed ARC’s owner, Charles McCormick, that the audit was taking longer than expected and the overall count was shorter than expected. As a result, American wanted to extend the time for the audit as a means of locating every possible cylinder. At the conclusion of the audit in May 2015, the final number of cylinders was 4,663, 1,837 short of the estimated total of 6,500. As a result, American did not pay the $150,000 that was held back, and ARC filed suit. Continue reading ›

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When officers of a corporation misrepresented the capacity of the corporation to meet requirements of an RFID manufacturing project, the district court allowed some claims for breach of contract, quantum meruit, and unjust enrichment to proceed. The court also dismissed some claims against the individual officers of the corporation, based on questions regarding the existence of valid contracts between the client and the officers.

A-1 Packaging Solutions, Inc. is a corporation that selects and provides RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies from a variety of manufacturers to provide custom solutions for customers. Fiberteq hired A-1 to design an asset and inventory tracking system for its facility in Danville, Illinois. A-1 contacted several manufacturers and distributors who provided the relevant technology, in search of options to complete the system.

Dr. William Davidson and Jan Svoboda, the Chief Technology Officer and President of Firefly RFID systems, were one company contacted by A-1. In response, Davidson and Svoboda told A-1 that Firefly had expertise in RFID hardware and deployments, and had the capability to build the system that A-1 had designed. As part of the negotiation, A-1 specified to Firefly that any rights to the software created by Firefly were required to be transferred to A-1. Firefly agreed. A-1 then retained Firefly to assist in designing and building the RFID system for Fiberteq. Continue reading ›

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The district court granted summary judgment to a bank on a breach of contract claim where a bank customer was precluded from suing bank for payment of fraudulent checks because customer did not report fraud within 90 days of receiving statement containing copy of first fraudulent check, and account agreement specified that fraud was required to be reported within 90 days.

Designer Direct, Inc. has a bank account with PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. Three of Designer Direct’s officers are authorized signers on its bank account. Between October 2016 and May 2017, Designer Direct’s former office manager, Kristiana Ostojic, forged one of those officers’, Stephen Rebarchak, signature on thirty-nine checks drawn on the account. Each check was made payable either to Ostojic or KO Development. The sum total of the fraudulent checks was $185,421.94

Ostojic deposited each check at either US Bank or JP Morgan Chase. The checks were then eventually presented to PNC for payment and were processed during the normal course of business through an automated system. PNC mailed account statements to Designer Direct each month. Each statement identified checks drawn on the account by date, check number, and amount. PNC also included copies of drawn checks with each statement.

Rebarchak reviewed all of the statements sent by PNC but did not see the electronic check copies because Ostojic intercepted the online statements and removed the check images before he could see them. When Rebarchak did finally see one of the checks, in May 2017, he was immediately aware of the fraud and notified PNC the next day. Designer Direct eventually sued PNC in federal district court in the Northern District of Illinois for breach of contract, alleging that PNC breached the account agreement by failing to exercise ordinary care in the payment of the checks. Continue reading ›

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Where the mortgage on a development company’s property was mistakenly recorded as satisfied, and then later corrected, the mistaken release did not extinguish the debt, and the contract was still effective.

Trinity 83 Development borrowed $2 million from a bank in return for a mortgage on real property and a note. Five years later, in 2011, the bank sold both the mortgage and the note to ColFin Midwest Funding, who relied on Midland Loan Services to collect the payments due. Two years later, Midland recorded a “satisfaction” document indicating that all debts associated with the note and mortgage had been paid. This recording was in error, as the loan was still outstanding. Unaware of the mistake, Trinity continued making payments on the loan. Continue reading ›

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Where a construction manager overstated amount in mechanic’s lien by more than 100%, and overstatement consisted of work performed by other contractors that manager did not have a contractual relationship with, the circuit court did not err in granting summary judgment to restaurant owner alleging constructive fraud on part of the construction manager.

In August 2017, MEP Construction filed suit against Truco MP and Randhurst Improvements seeking to foreclose upon a mechanic’s lien and other relief. The complaint alleged that Truco and MEP entered into a verbal contract in April 2014 in which MEP would provide construction management and related services to Truco for the purpose of building out Truco’s restaurant in Mount Prospect, Illinois. MEP alleged that it fully performed the work it was required to perform as of May 2015 and that Truco paid only $612,447.15 of $791,781.16. MEP recorded a mechanic’s lien in September 2015 with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. Continue reading ›

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