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Pay equity has become a hot topic of discussion and legislative focus across the United States in the last few years as states seek to adopt stricter pay equity laws and to increase enforcement efforts combating pay inequities for members of protected classes. At the federal level, Congress has introduced legislation aimed at securing pay equity. The Biden administration has also indicated its support for plans to strengthen pay equity between men and women. At the state level, Illinois is one of many states, including California and New York, to have passed or amended pay equity and related laws.

In June 2021, Illinois updated its equal pay reporting and compliance requirements. This amendment followed on the heels of another amendment to the same law passed in March 2021. Illinois Senate Bill 1847 amended the Illinois Equal Pay Act (IEPA) by expanding certain reporting requirements and by accelerating deadlines to certify compliance by potentially up to two years. The June 2021 amendments sought to clarify certain ambiguities in reporting requirements that had been previously identified and to revise the IEPA’s controversial penalty provision. Importantly for Illinois employers, some Illinois employers will be subject to reporting and certification obligations under the IEPA beginning in 2022 instead of in 2024.

The June 2021 amendments to the IEPA apply to private employers with more than 100 employees in Illinois and requires these employers to:

  • Apply for an “equal pay registration certificate” from the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL).
  • Pay a $150 filing fee and an equal pay compliance statement to the IDOL.
  • Submit their most recent Employer Information Report EEO-1.
  • Compile and submit demographic data and wage records.

Continue reading ›

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In a decision dealing with prior restraints on speech, the First District Appellate Court recently held that the trial court overstepped federal and state constitutional bounds when it ordered a company and its president to refrain from making any future online statements about a vendor the company had hired. The First District vacated the order entered by Cook County Circuit Judge Diane M. Shelley and issued an opinion explaining why the trial court’s order violated longstanding constitutional principles of free speech.

The plaintiff, Same Condition, LLC is a company that sought to create a web-based, medical patient-centered software application. Same Condition’s president, Munish Kumar, was a counter-defendant in the suit. Same Condition hired the defendant, Codal, Inc., to develop its software application. Codal allegedly failed to deliver the software application on time and when it did, Same Condition found the software to be unacceptable.

In May 2019, Same Condition sued Codal for breach of contract, among other claims. Codal then countersued Same Condition and Kumar for defamation per se, defamation per quod, violation of the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and commercial disparagement based on critical comments and reviews that Same Condition and Kumar had posted online. Continue reading ›

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Federal law allows schools to collaborate on their formulas for determining the amount of financial aid to award students, but they are not allowed to consider an applicant’s need for aid when determining whether to accept their application to become a student. A recent class-action lawsuit against 16 major U.S. universities alleges that, not only were the universities collaborating on their financial aid formulas, but that they did so in order to fix their prices, and that their actions unfairly limited the financial aid students were able to receive. The federal lawsuit also alleges that the defendants do factor an applicant’s need for aid in their admissions decisions and is therefore claiming they should not be eligible for the antitrust exemption.

Not only did this allegedly cheat undergraduate applicants out of financial aid, but if the allegations are true, they also would have made it more difficult for underprivileged candidates to gain admission to the universities.

The lawsuit is seeking a permanent injunction against the schools’ ability to collaborate on financial aid formulas, as well as damages to five former students who attended some of the schools.

But the five named plaintiffs are just the tip of the iceberg. The financial aid lawsuit currently names 16 of the biggest universities in the U.S. as defendants, including Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and Yale University. With so many schools listed as defendants in the federal financial aid lawsuit, the attorneys representing the plaintiffs think more than 170,000 undergraduate students who received at least partial financial aid from those schools over the past 18 years could be eligible to participate in the federal class-action lawsuit. Continue reading ›

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently joined the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits in ruling in favor of insurers facing COVID-19 business interruption lawsuits. The consolidated appeal dealt with three different claims under Illinois law brought by affected businesses in a diversified range of industries from a dentist office to a hotel.

Each of the plaintiffs was a business that had purchased a commercial-property insurance policy from the Cincinnati Insurance Company. Shortly after the initial outbreak of COVID in Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker issued several executive orders that forced each business to shut down or drastically scale back operations. As a result, the businesses claimed to have lost substantial business income and submitted claims to Cincinnati under their policies. Cincinnati denied each of the plaintiff’s insurance claims. Continue reading ›

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The Seventh Circuit in a recently issued decision held that an employer cannot invoke an arbitration provision to evade a shareholder class-action lawsuit seeking broad relief under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a federal law aimed at protecting participants in private employer retirement plans. In its decision, the Court found that claims under ERISA are generally subject to arbitration, but ultimately concluded that the District Court did not err in denying the defendants’ motion to compel arbitration of plaintiff’s class action under section 1132(a)(2) of ERISA due to a class action waiver in the arbitration agreement that would have precluded the plaintiff from asserting certain statutory rights.

The plaintiff, James Smith, worked for Triad Manufacturing, a shelving and fixture company, back in 2015 and 2016. While employed by Triad, he participated in the company’s employee stock ownership program, known as a “defined contribution plan” under ERISA. Triad’s board of directors created the plan for its employees in early December 2015.

According to his lawsuit, after forming the plan, three members of Triad’s board sold all Triad’s stock to the plan at a price of $58.05 per share, totaling more than $106 million. Four days later the board appointed GreatBanc Trust Company as plan trustee. GreatBanc then approved the transaction, seemingly after it had already occurred. Less than two weeks later, Triad’s share price dropped to $1.85, according to the plan’s financial statements. In effect, what had been valued at over $106 million plummeted in two weeks to just under $4 million. The suit alleges that the earliest the plan’s members could sell their shares was the end of 2016 due to vesting requirements, at which time the shares were worth only $1.15. By the end of 2018, the share price had dipped to less than $1 per share. Continue reading ›

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Back in September the resident-run condo board of 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan sued the developer of the building for $125 million to repair 1,500 alleged defects to the luxury condo building. According to the lawsuit, multiple residents experienced flooding in their units and noise as a result of alleged building defects. They also reported elevators that would get stuck and trap residents for hours.

The lawsuit further alleges that the construction issues have affected the building’s management, causing common charges to go up by 39% and insurance premiums to go up 300%.

The building’s developer denies the allegations made in the September lawsuit, arguing the allegations of safety defects were exaggerated, and that many of the problems it acknowledged were either caused and/or exacerbated by the residents themselves. According to the developer, it tried to address some of the issues listed in the residents’ lawsuit, but it claims the condo association either cancelled appointments or blocked access to the building when repairs were scheduled to be made.

As a result, the developer has filed a counter lawsuit against the condo board for defamation. According to the developer’s lawsuit, 90% of the building’s units were sold at the time the condo association filed its lawsuit, but sales dropped dramatically after the residents started making their allegations against the building’s developer. To back up its point, the developer pointed out that, overall, 2019 was a strong year for luxury condo sales, suggesting the lag in sales at the 432 Park Avenue building was most likely due at least in part to resident complaints. The developer has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking in its lawsuit against its residents, but it’s likely to be tens of millions of dollars.

The president of the condo board denies all the allegations made in the developer’s defamation lawsuit. Continue reading ›

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The Illinois Supreme Court recently issued its decision in a putative class-action lawsuit concerning the practice of State Farm of depreciating the cost of labor when paying out claims to holders of homeowner policies. In a 6-0 decision, the Illinois Supreme Court held that insurers may not depreciate labor costs when determining the “actual cash value” (ACV) of a covered loss where the policy does not define that term.

The case stems from a dispute following a homeowner’s insurance claim by the plaintiff Jarret Sproull under his policy issued by State Farm. Sproull’s home was damaged by wind in 2015. Sproull contacted State Farm and made a claim under his homeowner’s policy. Under Sproull’s policy, State Farm agreed to pay “only the actual cash value at the time of the loss of the damaged part of the property” initially and then the actual cost of repair or replacement after repairs were completed. Using a program called “Xactimate,” State Farm estimated a replacement cost value of $1,711.54 to repair the damage to Sproull’s home. After subtracting $1,000 for the deductible and $394.36 for depreciation and taxes, State Farm calculated an actual cash value of $317.18 and cut Sproull a check for that amount.

Believing that State Farm improperly calculated his actual cash value by depreciating labor in addition to materials, Sproull filed a putative class-action complaint in state court alleging that State Farm breached its contract by improperly depreciating the cost of intangible components of replacement cost, such as labor and concealing its practice from policyholders.

State Farm sought dismissal of Sproull’s complaint by arguing that its method of calculating actual cost value was mandated by an Illinois Department of Insurance (DOI) regulation which defined actual cash value as “replacement cost of property at time of loss less depreciation, if any.” The policy itself did not define the term actual cash value. The trial court denied the motion, finding the phrase “actual cash value” to be ambiguous in the context of State Farm’s policy. Continue reading ›

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The Nazis viewed modern art as “degenerate” and therefore confiscated whatever pieces of art they found to be “degenerate,” but that didn’t stop them from profiting off those pieces of art.

While the Nazi party refused to display artwork it did not approve of in German museums, they saw nothing wrong with selling the artwork to foreign buyers, which is how many pieces of art confiscated by the Nazis came to be displayed in American museums. That puts those museums in a morally uncomfortable position.

While the Nazis claim they “confiscated” works of art from its citizens, the truth is that they stole the artwork and used the proceeds from selling it to fund a fascist regime that killed millions of people.

In general, American museums recognize that artworks “confiscated” by Nazis are stolen, and that the Nazis had no legal right to sell them. As a result, American museums have returned many pieces of stolen artwork to the heirs of their original owners or creators, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art is still hanging on to “Composition with Blue” by Piet Mondrian, which was “confiscated” by the Nazis and sold to an American during WWII.

Mondrian had given the painting to Sophie Küppers, a German art historian and dealer, shortly after he completed it in 1926. The next year, Küppers moved to the Soviet Union, leaving the painting in Hanover at the Provinzialmuseum. After the Nazis came to power, they “confiscated” the painting, whereupon it was given to Karl Buchholz to sell to a foreign buyer.

Buchholz had a business partner, Curt Valentin, who was based in New York, so Buchholz sent the painting to Valentin to be sold in the United States. Valentin sold it to an art collector named Albert E. Gallatin. Continue reading ›

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Apple recently sued the NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance company that allegedly uses Apple products to spy on targets for its government clients. While the NSO Group has tried to portray itself as a company that helps bring criminals to justice and save lives, a closer look at their clients (and the targets of those clients) tells a more insidious story.

According to internal documents from the NSO Group that were leaked to the press, the surveillance company’s clients include the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, and the targets of those clients have included dissidents, activists, and journalists. The documents also revealed that the teenaged children of those targets (some of whom were living in the U.S.) were also surveilled.

The NSO Group’s legal troubles started back in 2019 when Facebook sued the surveillance company for targeting its WhatsApp users. The surveillance company tried to claim foreign sovereign immunity to have the lawsuit dismissed, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected that argument, thereby paving the way for the case to proceed through the courts.

The unanimous decision also paved the way for Apple to file its own lawsuit against the NSO Group. When Apple discovered that the NSO Group had created spyware that allowed it to access data on a target’s Apple product and transmit it back to the government servers without the target knowing about it, Apple took steps to both prevent future attacks, and to bring the NSO Group to justice for this invasion of privacy.

When it turned out that NSO’s engineers had created more than 100 fake Apple IDs to carry out the attack, Apple was able to sue the surveillance company for violating Apple’s Terms and Conditions, to which every user must agree in order to set up their account. One section of Apple’s Terms and Conditions specifies that users’ engagement with Apple and its products and services are to be governed by California state law. That’s the clause that allowed the Silicon Valley company to sue an Israeli surveillance company in U.S. federal court. Continue reading ›

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Patrick Austermuehle of our firm filed an Amicus Brief on behalf of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and the National Association of Consumer Advocates on a important access to justice issue for consumers who have been defrauded including consumers who have been scammed by used car dealers.

Who Are ITLA and NACA?

The National Association of Consumer Advocates (“NACA”) is a nonprofit corporation whose members are lawyers, law professors, and students practicing or studying consumer-protection law. NACA’s mission is to promote justice for consumers through information sharing among consumer advocates and to serve as a voice for its members and consumers in the struggle to curb unfair and oppressive business practices.

The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (“ITLA”) is a statewide organization whose members focus their practices in representing injured consumers and workers. Founded in 1952, the organization
has more than 2,000 members. ITLA’s principles and mission are simple: to achieve and maintain high standards of professional ethics, competency and demeanor in the bench and bar; to uphold the Constitutions of the United States of America and the State of Illinois; to secure and protect the rights of those injured in their persons or civil rights; to defend trial by jury and the
adversarial system of justice; to promote fair, prompt and efficient administration of justice; and to educate and train in the art of advocacy. Continue reading ›

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