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Where a class of consumers sued an energy company for breach of contract, fraud, and unjust enrichment, the district court dismissed some, but not all, of the claims. The district court found that the consumers had sufficiently alleged that the energy company violated its agreement to charge rates for electricity based on market conditions and that the consumers had pled a claim for unjust enrichment in the alternative. However, the court found that the consumers failed to allege adequate details of a fraudulent scheme.

Verde Energy USA, Inc. was sued by a class of consumers in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois. The consumers alleged that Verde violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practice Act, breached its contract, or alternatively was guilty of unjust enrichment with respect to the class. The consumers’ complaint alleged that Verde had taken advantage of the deregulation of the Illinois energy market, convincing consumers to switch from their prior energy company to Verde by offering a teaser rate that was lower than the utilities’ actual rates for electricity. The consumers alleged that, after the teaser rate expired, Verde switched consumers to a variable rate that was not based on market conditions as required by the contract the consumers had with Verde. Continue reading ›

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Where an employee was free to take the knowledge he had accumulated over his nearly 30-year long career into his next job as a consultant, representing buyers of the products of his former employer.

Archer Daniels Midland is one of the largest manufacturers of corn-based sweeteners in the United States. In its most recent fiscal year, the sweeteners division of ADM realized a profit of $600 million. ADM sells its sweeteners to a few hundred buyers in the United States, including Sensory Effects, Inc. and PMP, Inc.

ADM categorizes buyers in one of two categories: toll contract or flat rate. Toll contract buyers contract to buy a fixed quantity of sweetener from ADM during a year, with the price fluctuating in response to the price of corn. Toll contracts may be entered into at any time of the year. Flat rate contracts can be entered into only during ADM’s annual contracting season, which lasts 30 to 60 days, beginning in the late summer. Under a flat rate agreement, the buyer agrees to pay a fixed price for a full year’s supply of sweetener.

Lane Sinele worked for ADM from January 1990 until his retirement in August 2018. At his retirement, Sinele was the manager of national accounts for ADM’s sweetener division. Sinele represented ADM, soliciting, procuring, and servicing buyers of sweeteners. Sinele handled the accounts for both Sensory Effects and PMP. As part of his employment, Sinele signed two non-disclosure agreements, though he did not sign either non-compete or non-solicitation agreements. During his career, Sinele had access to ADM’s Tableau system, which contained proprietary information about freight systems, factories, customer orders, manufacturing costs, and margins. Continue reading ›

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When a water main was damaged by work performed by a telecommunications company, causing a pharmacy to flood and sustain damage, the circuit court did not err in granting summary judgment to the insurance company. The Illinois appellate court found that the policy’s exclusion of coverage for damages relating to water from under the surface of the ground applied to water that originated underground, even if the damage caused by that water occurred above ground.

In December 2015, Prekshot Professional Pharmacy was operating in leased space in Peoria, Illinois. Preckshot had a contract of insurance with its insurer, Pharmacists Mutual. AT&T and its subcontractor were performing directional boring behind Preckshot’s premises. The boring damaged a water service line near the Preckshot premises, causing a discharge of water that flooded the Preckshot pharmacy above the ground.

Preckshot subsequently filed a claim with Pharmacists Mutual pursuant to its insurance policy. Pharmacists dispatched an investigator to determine the precise cause of the damages. The inspector concluded that the water from the ruptured line flowed through under a concrete slab and came up through the ground to infiltrate the interior of the pharmacy. Pharmacists then denied Preckshot’s claim, stating that coverage was excluded by a provision in the policy which excluded perils caused by water below the surface of the ground. Continue reading ›

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What if you were a college student and you realized one of your professors kept a seating chart that included comments about each student’s race and judgments on their physical appearance? That’s the possibility that Elmhurst College students faced when an article was published in the student newspaper, The Leader, about Professor Timothy Hays, the music business director at Elmhurst College. A student allegedly took a photo of Hays’s seating chart when he was out of the room and sent it to the school newspaper.

The seating chart allegedly contained notes beneath each student’s name relating to their physical appearance, including “black,” “Hispanic,” and, for a female student, “cute.” While such notes might seem harmless to the professor, they could be in the view of some of the students and the college administration, ways of separating minority students out from the “normal” white, male students, and such notes some students and the administration could argue have a profound effect on the way the professor treats those students, even if he’s not consciously aware of it. Some will claim that such views simply reflect political correctedness and that private notes should not be a basis for taking action against a professor abesent proof that he has ever acted in such a discriminatory fashion. However, benign discrimination is always hard to detect.

Hays argued that the notes were intended to be private and were never meant to be publicly distributed and were simply a tool to help him identify and remember students and their classroom contributions. Hays then allegedly made the situation worse for himself after the initial article was published by allegedly lashing out at students in his class after the article was published. Some Students complained to college officials and got them to bring in a new professor for the class and The Leader published another article about Hays relating to the incident.

Another student alleged Hays cornered her in a stairwell and looked down her shirt. She said she told college officials about it, but nothing was done until the third article about Professor Hays was published, detailing the incident. Continue reading ›

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Where an agreement between two corporations specified that the parties were required to obtain subrogation waivers for enumerated insurance policies, and the claim was later made to the insurance company under a non-listed type of policy, the insurance company was entitled to recover the amount paid out under claim from the liable party.

ArcelorMittal leased lift truck tractors from Gallo Equipment Co. under a written contract. The contract was entered into in January 2011. In September 2012, one of the tractors caught fire at one of ArcelorMittal’s steel mills. The tractor was maintained by Arcelor mechanics under the supervision of a Gallo employee, and Arcelor was responsible for the loss. Arcelor offered to compensate Gallo for the loss, but Gallo rejected the offer as too low. Gallo then submitted a claim to its insurer, Travelers Property Casualty Company. Travelers settled the claim for $305,625.

In June 2015, Travelers, as subrogee of Gallo, filed a complaint against Arcelor in the Circuit Court of Cook County for negligence and breach of contract. Travelers later dismissed its negligence claim. Travelers alleged that Arcelor was responsible for any damage to the tractor and that Arcelor was responsible for the cost to replace or repair the tractor. Travelers thus sought recovery for the amount it paid to Gallo. 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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Sara Tirschwell, an investor who had been hired by TCW in 2016 to raise and run a new distressed debt fund for the giant asset-management firm, suddenly found herself without a job on December 14, 2017. She had been called into a meeting with the firm’s chief compliance officer and general counsel and informed that she had unethically told an employee in another department about a potential deal. According to TCW, it was Tirschwell’s fifth violation in 18 months and grounds for termination.

Tirschwell said the firm’s chief executive offered her a $500,000 severance package on the condition that she sign an agreement promising not to sue the firm. Tirschwell did not take the deal because she didn’t think her termination had anything to do with compliance – she claims it was retaliation.

Nine days before this meeting, Tirschwell had sent an email to the head of human resources, saying that her boss, Jess Ravich, had pressured her into having sex with him several times since she started working for the firm and that he had groped her in the office. When she put a stop to it, he allegedly sabotaged her job by refusing to support her fund. The general counsel and head of HR interviewed Tirschwell about her complaint and promised to investigate. Instead, she claims she was fired in retaliation for bringing harassment claims to the attention of management. The company claimed that she knew she was about to be fired for poor performance and simply created grounds to claim retaliation especially given the many holes in her story and gaps in her memory and failure to meet performance and money raising goals. Continue reading ›

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In a lengthy opinion, a split New York appeals court rejected President Trump’s argument that he was immune from a defamation lawsuit by virtue of his position as President. The plaintiff in the libel suit is former Apprentice contestant, Summer Zervos. With this opinion, President Trump joins President Clinton as contributors to the jurisprudence clarifying the contours and extent of presidential immunity. The appellate court in Zervos v. Trump relied heavily upon Clinton v. Jones, the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court opinion which held that presidents aren’t immune from civil actions in federal court based on purely private conduct.

The underlying defamation lawsuit stems from statements made by Trump during his campaign. Following release of a video depicting Trump making crude comments about women, Zervos held a press conference in which she accused Trump of kissing her twice in 2007 and attacking her and making unwanted sexual advances in a Beverly Hills hotel room.

Trump responded to Zervos’s accusations with a flurry of statements saying “I never met her at a hotel” and that the “allegations are 100% false. . . . They are made up, they never happened.” In several tweets and at campaign rallies, Trump further responded to the accusations of Zervos and others claiming, “I didn’t know any of these women,” and “didn’t see these women” and their allegations were “100 percent fabricated and made-up charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton campaign.”

Zervos followed these statements by filing a defamation suit alleging that Trump’s statements amounted to branding her a liar which damaged her reputation in the community. Zervos seeks actual and punitive damages from the President. Ms. Zervos’s attorney, Gloria Allred, announced the lawsuit days before President Trump took office. Continue reading ›

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When a candidate for governor sued news organization alleging defamation and libel as a result of news organization’s statements concerning candidate’s domestic violence conviction and history as gang member, summary judgment was granted for news organization. The appellate court found that the statements about the candidate’s domestic violence conviction were substantially true, and that the statement’s about the candidate’s history as a gang member, while false, were not made with actual malice.

In August 2013, Tio Hardiman declared his intention to run for Governor of Illinois. In January 2014, it was announced that Hardiman’s name would appear first on the Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot. After the announcement, Hardiman was interviewed by Mike Flannery, the political editor for Fox Chicago WFLD for a segment slated to air during WFLD’s 9 p.m. news broadcast. Ahead of the broadcast, Katie Fraser, WFLD’s web producer, wrote an article for WFLD’s website titled, “Controversial candidate remains on primary ballot for governor.” The article detailed Hardiman’s explanation to Flannery of the dismissal of a 1999 guilty plea and conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence against Hardiman’s then wife.

Prior to the broadcast, a teaser was read on-air by news anchor Jeff Herndon, stating, “Also, a former gang member who was once accused of beating his wife wants to be your governor. Why he says voters shouldn’t be concerned about his domestic violence conviction.” At some point after Hardiman’s interview aired, Hardiman contacted the WFLD newsroom stating that he was not a former gang member. That same night, WFLD clarified on air that Hardiman stated that he had worked closely with gang members but was not, himself, a gang member. Later that evening, Hardiman saw the web article and contacted WFLD a second time, requesting that they retract the portion of the article concerning Hardiman’s domestic violence conviction. WFLD later updated the article to specify that Hardiman had received a sentence of probation after pleading guilty to the charge. 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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