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You can view the decision here.

Our Naperville, IL libel and slander lawyers concentrate in this area of the law. We have defended or prosecuted a number of defamation and libel cases, including cases representing a consumer sued by a large luxury used car dealer in federal court for hundreds of negative internet reviews and videos which resulted in substantial media coverage of the suit; one of Loyola University’s largest contributors when the head basketball coach sued him for libel after he was fired; and a lawyer who was falsely accused of committing fraud with the false allegation published to the Dean of the University of Illinois School of Law, where the lawyer attended law school and the President of the University of Illinois. One of our partners also participated in representing a high profile athlete against a well-known radio shock jock.

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download-300x150download-1-300x150Super Lawyers named Chicago and Oak Brook shareholder oppression attorney Peter Lubin a Super Lawyer in the Categories of Class Action, Business Litigation, and Consumer Rights Litigation. Patrick Austermuehle of the Firm was named a Rising Star again and has a great deal of experience as a Chicago Defamation Libel and Slander Lawyer.  Peter Lubin and Patrick Austermuehle have achieved this honor for many years which is only given to 5% of Illinois’ attorneys each year.

Lubin Austermuehle’s Oak Brook and Chicago business dispute lawyers have over thirty years experience in litigating defamation, breach of fiduciary duty and shareholder oppression lawsuits.  Our Chicago non-compete agreement and trade secret theft lawyers prosecute and defend many types of unfair business practices and emergency business lawsuits involving injunctions, and TROS, covenant not to compete, franchise, distributor and dealer wrongful termination and trade secret lawsuits and many different kinds of business disputes involving shareholders, partnerships, closely held businesses and employee breaches of fiduciary duty. We also assist businesses and business owners who are victims of fraud.



Lubin Austermuehle’s Wheaton, Schaumburg, and Evanston business litigation attorneys have more than two and half decades of experience helping business clients unravel the complexities of Illinois and out-of-state business laws. Our Chicago business, commercial, class-action, and consumer litigation lawyers represent individuals, family businesses and enterprises of all sizes in a variety of legal disputes, including disputes among partners and shareholders as well as lawsuits between businesses and consumer rights, auto fraud, and wage claim individual and class action cases. In every case, our goal is to resolve disputes as quickly and successfully as possible, helping business clients protect their investments and get back to business as usual. From offices in Oak Brook, near Naperville and Aurora, we serve clients throughout Illinois and the Midwest.

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The Board of Forensic Document Examiners (“Board”), a non-profit organization that administers a certification program for forensic document examiners, filed a defamation lawsuit against the American Bar Association (“ABA”) alleging that it suffered reputational harm from an article published in an ABA law journal. A federal district court dismissed the claim finding that the statements in the journal article were non-actionable opinion protected from liability by the First Amendment. The non-profit appealed and the Seventh Circuit, agreeing with the district court, affirmed the dismissal.

The summer 2015 edition of The Judges’ Journal, a journal published by the ABA, contained an article written by Thomas Vastrick, a forensic document examiner who was certified by one of the plaintiff’s competitors, the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. The article purported to offer judges guidance for evaluating the qualifications and credentials of forensic document examiners, which analyze and compare handwriting and provide expert testimony in judicial proceedings. In the four-page article, Vastrick urged judges to look for experts certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners and to “be wary of other certifying bodies.”

The article did not mention the Board by name. Nonetheless, the Board believed that the article defamed its members by creating the impression that they were “lesser qualified” examiners than those certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. The Board responded to the article by filing suit alleging defamation per se and invasion of privacy on behalf of its members generally and one member specifically who was singled out in Vastrick’s article.

The Board’s complaint focused on four specific statements in the article. The first statement urged judges that to be “an appropriately trained forensic document examiner,” the examiner should have completed “a full-time, in-residence training program lasting a minimum of 24 months[.]” The next statement claimed that “The American Board of Forensic Document Examiners … is the only certification board recognized by the broader forensic science community, law enforcement, and courts for maintaining principles and training requirements concurrent with the published training standards” and warned judges to “be wary of other certifying bodies.” The remaining two statements generally warned judged to look out for and be wary of examiners certified by any certification board other than The American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. Continue reading ›

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What if you paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for new, original paintings by a famous artist, only to be told that the artist hasn’t painted in years and the paintings were created by someone you’ve never heard of? According to a series of lawsuits, Adam Max, son of the famous painter, Peter Max, has allegedly been taking advantage of his father’s declining mental health in order to make a profit for himself and a few of his business partners by selling new paintings with his dad’s name on them. The problem is that Max is allegedly no longer painting.

Widely considered to be a countercultural icon in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Max was one of the few painters to become a household name and have his work displayed on the White House lawn, the cover of Time Magazine, and even postage stamps. Now he’s 81 years old and suffering from dementia, but new paintings with his name on them continue to sell for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whether he’s really painting them is up for debate.

According to one of the many lawsuits between Max’s friends and family members, his son, Adam, together with three business associates, allegedly took over Max’s studio in order to profit off what is already one of the most lucrative art franchises of the 20th century. They have allegedly filled the studio with 18 painters they recruited (many of them off the street) and are paying minimum wage in order to produce paintings in Max’s famous style. Max is then allegedly instructed to hold out his hand and sign his name to each painting so his son can sell them at auction. Continue reading ›

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You might think of making popcorn as a fairly simple process: you pop the popcorn, coat it in your flavor of choice, package it and sell it. But the fact is that snack food manufacturers invest an incredible amount of time, money, and resources into crafting recipes that are perfectly addictive, then test and retest those recipes before they start putting them on shelves.

Garrett Popcorn Shops says it guards the secret to its popcorn recipes so closely that only three employees are given access to the recipes and they have to prove their identity with a fingerprint scan before they can access the recipes.

Aisha Putnam was one of the three employees with access to Garrett Popcorn Shops’ incredibly valuable recipes in the four years she worked as the company’s director of research and development. She was fired in early March of this year, but she got a heads up that she was going to be fired and so she allegedly stole more than 5,400 files using a USB drive and her personal email. The files allegedly contained everything that had ever been shared with her and/or stored on her computer: from the company’s top secret recipes and production processes to pricing information, supplier information, distribution agreements, and market research. Continue reading ›

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Have you ever been so excited to receive a job offer that you signed the employment contract without doing much more than skimming it (if that)? It’s a common story, and there’s a reason the employment contract tends to be the last step in the process – sometimes even coming after the employee has already started working their new job.

If you’ve ever found yourself in the situation described above and you weren’t working in a state like California (which bans non-compete agreements), then the employment contract you signed probably included a clause forbidding you from going to work for a competitor. How much your contract prohibited any chances of employment you had in the future would have depended on the company, but many employers (especially large corporations) have been getting increasingly aggressive with their non-compete agreements in recent years and legislators all over the country have been retaliating. Continue reading ›

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Despite the strides we’ve made towards gender equality, men’s careers are still typically seen as more valuable than women’s careers, not only in the form of higher salaries but also in the form of prioritizing men’s careers over women’s safety. This is true in almost every industry, but especially in college sports. Because college sports teams regularly bring in millions of dollars for their schools, colleges and universities often go to great lengths to protect their athletes and their athletic programs – even when it means sacrificing the educations and careers of female students.

Title IX is a federal law that was enacted to put a stop to these kinds of dangerous and discriminatory practices so women could feel safe on campus, and yet many women still struggle to access their rights under this federal protection. While many colleges all over the country have been accused of denying female students their rights under Title IX, Michigan State University is the latest to face a lawsuit alleging it denied rights guaranteed under Title IX to female students by actively discouraging them from reporting sexual harassment and assault conducted by members of the school’s athletic program. Continue reading ›

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Most people know better than to just throw their electronics in the trash. Instead, they should be responsibly recycled, which is where companies like Intercon come in. As technology evolves faster than ever and objects become obsolete almost as soon as they’re introduced to the market, Brian Brundage saw an opportunity to make some major profits for his company, Intercon.

Most people just don’t want to deal with the hassle of trying to figure out how to properly dispose of their electronics. They’d much rather hand their electronics off to a third party and trust they’ll recycle the old electronics responsibly. But what if the company they trust to recycle their used electronics isn’t as trustworthy as it seems?

Brundage’s company, Intercon, was supposed to be the company that would take used electronics off the hands of people and the corporations they ran. Intercon claimed their operations were eco-friendly and that none of the electronics they took went into a landfill when, in fact, much of the e-waste they took from their clients either went into a landfill, to third parties in China, or to other places that were equally unfriendly to the environment. Continue reading ›

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Any time you need photos for any kind of marketing material, but don’t want to spend a fortune on a professional photographer, you probably go online and search for photos that are either in the public domain (and can, therefore, be used for free) or photos with licenses that can be bought for a price that fits your budget. But how can you tell if the entity you’re paying for the rights to the photo really has the license?

Getty is the go-to source of high quality, affordable photos for many people. You pay them a small fee for the license of the photo you want and you’re free to use it within the restrictions of the license. Except, according to a recent proposed consumer class action lawsuit against Getty, you were always free to use some of those photos without having to pay Getty anything. Continue reading ›

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Earlier this month, a Florida daycare responded to a negative online review left by parents of a child that until recently attended the daycare by serving the parents who left the review with a defamation lawsuit. The parents, Marc LaRocco and Kimberly Moore, left the review after they claim the daycare, The Learning Experience, repeatedly fed their son Owen dairy despite being notified that the child had an allergy to milk.

The parents of the child who attended The Learning Experience daycare in Sunrise, Florida claim that they notified the daycare upon enrolling their son that he was allergic to milk. Despite this, the parents claim that the daycare sent them pictures on numerous occasions of their son eating foods containing dairy. The parents claim that their son suffered rashes and vomiting as a result.

After removing their son from the daycare, the parents took to social media to describe what they claim was their experience at The Learning Experience in Sunrise, Florida. In lengthy online reviews, the couple made statements, according to the complaint, such as: “The Learning Experience- Sunrise is ill-equipped to handle children with any type of special needs.” The complaint also alleges that the couple wrote that: “This school needs a complete overhaul in training and management” and “If you value your child’s life, do not allow them to attend this facility.” The daycare responded to the reviews by filing a lawsuit claiming that the statements were “false and injurious” false and made with “reckless disregard for the truth.” The daycare alleges that the “statements were communicated to at least 500,000 third parties” and “negatively impacted (The Learning Experience’s) trustworthiness and character.” A CBS affiliate in Miami ran a story about the lawsuit and interviewed the parents. That story and the interview can be found below:

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Contact Information
Chicago Office
19 S LaSalle St #702
Chicago, IL 60603
Phone: 630-333-0333
Mailing Address
17W220 22nd St #410
Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181
Phone: 630-333-0333 Please direct all mail correspondence to our Oakbrook Terrace address.
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