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Alison Victoria, a Chicago native and one of the stars of HGTV’s “Windy City Rehab” has said that she wants to take over Chicago and put her stamp on every neighborhood. Whether fellow Chicagoans want that is another matter, and one that is currently being handled (at least in part) in the courts since Victoria and her partner, Donovan Eckhardt, is being sued by the buyers of one of their home renovations.

The house at 2308 W. Giddings Street sold for $1.36 million after Victoria and Eckhardt gave it a makeover. The end of the episode featuring the house showed it looking fixed up with fresh paint and chic furniture, but according to the current residents’ allegations (which are denied), the rehab was only skin deep, while severe structural damage continues to cause problems. Continue reading ›

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CNN has agreed to settle a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann earlier this month. A CNN spokesperson has confirmed that a settlement was reached but the news outlet has declined to offer further details.

In March of last year, Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN seeking more than $275 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The lawsuit alleged that the cable news networked engaged in a “vicious attack” against Sandmann in its coverage of him following his encounter with 64-year-old Native American Nathan Phillips in January of that year.

According to the complaint, which was filed in federal court in Kentucky, “CNN falsely asserted” that Sandmann and his classmates were in a “racis[t]” “mob mentality” and “looked like they were going to lynch” a nearby group of Black Hebrew Israelites “because they didn’t like the color of their skin” or “their religious views.” The suit goes on to allege that CNN further reported that Sandmann and his classmates “surrounded” Phillips and “harassed and taunted” him, creating “a really dangerous situation” during which Sandmann “blocked [Phillips’] escape” and caused Phillips to “fear for his safety and the safety of those with him.” Continue reading ›

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Democratic presidential candidate and congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit last week against Hillary Clinton over statements the former Secretary of State made during an interview characterizing Gabbard as a Russian asset. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks more than $50 million in damages as well as an award of punitive damages for alleged damage to Gabbard’s professional and personal reputation.

Clinton’s allegedly defamatory comments are merely part of an ongoing feud between the politicians that dates back at least until 2016. According to the lawsuit, Clinton has sought revenge on Gabbard ever since Gabbard endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. Clinton, who the lawsuit refers to as a “cutthroat politician,” made the allegedly slanderous statements as “retribution” for Gabbard’s “perceived slight,” the lawsuit claims. Continue reading ›

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All too often attorney misconduct in the course of litigation goes unreported and unpunished. Incivility in litigation delays the resolution of cases, taxes an already overburdened judiciary, and increases the cost of litigating a matter. Despite this, attorney incivility is regrettably on the rise in state and federal courts around the country. One federal magistrate judge recently decided that enough was enough and issued a benchslap to a pair of attorneys for misconduct at a deposition. In his recent opinion in Sokolova v. United Airlines, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole issued a scathing rebuke of the attorneys while offering a primer on proper deposition decorum.

The deposition that spawned dueling sanctions motions and accusations and cross-accusations of discovery misconduct got off to an unceremonious start with plaintiffs’ counsel arriving nearly 30 minutes late according to the opinion. Things improved little from there. Almost immediately after starting the deposition, things went off the rails when plaintiffs’ attorney took issue with the interpreter’s translation of the oath. Continue reading ›

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When an employee of a medical parts manufacturer was caught up in a foreign corrupt practices investigation of his employer and subsequently fired, the employee could not sue the employer for defamation. The employer included the former employee on a list of prohibited parties that the employer claimed posed an unacceptable compliance risk for the company. The appellate panel found that these statements were not defamatory because they were expressions of opinion or were the truth.

Biomet is a global corporation that manufactures and sells medical devices. Biomet is headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana. Biomet subsidiary Biomet Argentina, SA employed Alejandro Yeatts from 2005 to 2015. Yeatts worked in the position of Business Manager for South America from 2008 through 2014. Yeatts responsibilities included implementing Biomet’s compliance policies.

Biomet had a distribution agreement with Prosintese, a Brazillian company run by Sergio Galindo. In 2008, Biomet terminated that agreement after it learned that Galindo had bribed healthcare providers to promote and market Biomet products. This conduct is prohibited by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Yeatts was informed after the fact that Galindo had paid bribes. Yeatts had also attended FCPA training sessions explaining prohibited conduct. Continue reading ›

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The owner of an upscale downtown Chicago hotel sued a competing hotel elsewhere in the city for trademark infringement. After more than a year, the plaintiff company eventually voluntarily dismissed its suit. The defendants then moved for attorney fees. The district court initially denied the motion, finding that the plaintiffs had not brought the type of exceptional case that warranted fee-shifting after dismissing the claims. The defendants appealed, and the appellate panel determined that the district court applied the wrong standard in evaluating the motion for fee-shifting. The panel reversed the decision of the district court and remanded the case with instructions for the court to reanalyze the request for fees under the correct standard.

LHO Chicago River, LLC, owns an upscale downtown Chicago hotel that underwent a branding change in February 2014 when it became “Hotel Chicago,” a signature Marriott venue. Around May 2016, Joseph Perillo and his three associated entities opened their own “Hotel Chicago” only three miles from LHO’s site. LHO then sued the defendants for trademark infringement and unfair competition under the Lanham Act, as well as for trademark infringement and deceptive practices under Illinois state law. Continue reading ›

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When companies decide where to establish a headquarters or where to expand, they must weigh several factors such as access to qualified candidates and tax laws. One factor businesses are considering more and more is the litigation climate of a state or local jurisdiction. According to a recent study, that does not bode well for Illinois, which ranked last among states for the quality of its litigation climate among businesses. Additionally, the City of Chicago and Cook County ranked as the worst local jurisdiction in the nation according to the same study.

Since 2002, the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform has conducted a survey to explore how fair and reasonable the states’ liability systems are perceived to be by U.S. businesses. Last year’s survey was performed by The Harris Poll and consisted of more than 1,300 respondents consisting of in-house general counsel, senior litigators, and other senior executives at companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues.

The survey broadly focuses on perceptions of a state’s liability system by asking participants to assign a state a grade of A, B, C, D, or F in each of the following areas:

  • Overall treatment of tort and contract litigation
  • Enforcing meaningful venue requirements
  • Treatment of class action suits and mass consolidation suits
  • Damages
  • Proportional discovery
  • Scientific and technical evidence
  • Trial judges’ impartiality
  • Trial judges’ competence
  • Juries’ fairness
  • The quality of the appellate review

These grades were then used to develop the ranking of each state. The study also sought to identify specific cities or counties that might impact a state’s ranking. Accordingly, participants were given a list of cities or counties with reputations for having a poor litigation climate and asked to select two that have the least fair and reasonable litigation environments.

The results of the study were published in a report titled The 2019 Lawsuit Climate Survey: Ranking the States. Overall, Illinois ranked 50 out of 50. Illinois beat out Louisiana (49th), California (48th), Mississippi (47th), and Florida (46th) for the dubious distinction as the state with the worst litigation climate. Illinois has ranked in the bottom five states every year since 2005. Its highest ranking came in 2002, the first year the study was conducted when Illinois was ranked 34th. Continue reading ›

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On December 4, 2019, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 1557. This new law contains various amendments to the Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (“Cannabis Act”), 410 ILCS 705/1 et seq., and provides clarity regarding the interplay between the Cannabis Act and the Illinois’ Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act (“Right to Privacy Act”), 820 ILCS 55/1 et seq.

The Cannabis Act legalized (under state law) the adult-use of cannabis recreationally and goes into effect January 1, 2020. The Cannabis Act does not interfere with employers’ drug-free policies but instead expressly provides that employers are free to adopt reasonable zero-tolerance or drug-free workplace policies, provided that the policies are applied in a nondiscriminatory manner. In addition, the law provides that employers have the right to discipline or terminate an employee for violating a workplace drug policy.

As originally written, uncertainty remained concerning whether employers could discipline or terminate an employee pursuant to post-offer, pre-employment positive drug test, or even pursuant to a post-accident or random positive drug test. Much of the confusion was due to recent amendments to the Right to Privacy Act, which prohibit an employer from disciplining an employee for use of “lawful products” while off duty.

The recent amendments to the Right to Privacy Act deemed “lawful products” to include products that are lawful under state law, which effective January 1, 2020, would include cannabis used recreationally. This led to a possible interpretation that would create a cause of action for applicants who tested positive for cannabis at the post-offer, pre-employment stage because any such use would have been off-duty, in direct violation of the Right to Privacy Act. Continue reading ›

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Settling most cases is a difficult process, particularly when the parties dispute what exactly happened or when the underlying claim turns out to be smaller than anticipated. In Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) cases, the process can be even more difficult depending on the court’s interpretation of the FLSA’s enforcement provision, section 16, which permits the Department of Labor to supervise settlements.

Courts have reached differing interpretations regarding this statutory language and whether it requires DOL or judicial approval of all FLSA settlements. The parties to an FLSA case may wish to avoid having to submit a settlement agreement to the court to obtain approval before a case can be settled. Such reasons include a desire to keep the settlement terms confidential, the cost of obtaining judicial approval, and the time delay inherent in having to obtain judicial or DOL approval. The question that has long plagued litigants and attorneys alike is whether the parties can find a means of settling their matters without having to seek review, as they do with virtually every other kind of employment case. Continue reading ›

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An Illinois appellate court recently affirmed grant of summary judgment in favor of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) in a class-action lawsuit alleging that ComEd violated the Illinois Employee Credit Privacy Act (“Act”), 820 ILCS 70/1 et seq., by investigating the plaintiff’s credit history in connection with a conditional offer of employment and ultimately refusing to hire her as a result of that investigation.

Many Illinois residents are familiar with ComEd, the public utility company that provides electrical services to nearly four million customers in Illinois. In 2017, ComEd offered the plaintiff a conditional offer for a part-time position. The offer was contingent upon the plaintiff’s successfully passing a background check, credit check, and drug test. ComEd subsequently withdrew its offer and notified the plaintiff by email that “due, in part, to information received from the consumer report previously provided to you, we are not able to offer you employment at this time.”

The plaintiff responded to the news by filing a class-action lawsuit alleging that, by inquiring into her credit history and obtaining her credit report in connection with her application for a position and by ultimately refusing to hire her because of information contained in the report, ComEd violated her rights under the Act. Continue reading ›

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