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It’s a case of he said/she said, in which the claim and counterclaim are nearly impossible to prove, and outcomes have been historically unfavorable to women, even when there is solid evidence to prove their side of the story.

What she says happened:

While posing for a photo with David Mueller and his girlfriend, Shannon Melcher, Taylor Swift alleges Mueller reached up her dress and grabbed her behind. Despite her attempts to shift position, Swift alleges his hand remained firmly on that private part of her body and she says she has no doubt it was Mueller who groped her and that the groping was intentional.

Rather than confront the 6’3” and 200+ pound man, Swift waited until he had left, then notified security and her tour manager that the man had touched her inappropriately. Members of her staff tracked down Mueller and Melcher and escorted them out of the building. Swift’s team, including Frank Bell, who handles radio relations for Swift, contacted KYGO, the radio station where Mueller worked as a radio host, to complain, and two days later Mueller was out of a job. Continue reading ›

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Streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Spotify, are all wonderful for consumers, but they can create problems for copyright attorneys.

In traditional retail, copyright holders are the only ones who maintain the right to reproduce and sell published content, including books, articles, videos, and music. But there’s a specific type of publishing license, called a mechanical license, that distributors can get to cover their reproduction of copyrighted works (such as the songs Spotify makes available to its customers).

According to a class action copyright infringement lawsuit recently filed against Spotify, the music streaming company allegedly violated copyright laws by failing to pay for mechanical licenses for numerous songs it was distributing to its listeners.

Shortly after the lawsuit was first filed, a representative of the company released a public statement, claiming the information necessary to identify the proper copyright holder is not always available. He insisted that, in such instances, Spotify sets aside licensing money for when the proper copyright holders could be found.

But according to David Lowery, the musician who filed the class action lawsuit, the statement is as good as an admission of guilt. Even if Spotify felt it was doing the best it could, the fact remains that copyright law requires you to pay the copyright holder before you can distribute their work. Lowery and his attorneys maintain that, by failing to do so, Spotify was violating U.S. copyright laws. Continue reading ›

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Start-ups (specifically tech start-ups) generally don’t have much need for inexperienced or untrained students who just graduated and are now entering the workforce. Instead, they have a greater need of well-trained, knowledgeable, experienced workers to help them build their new venture into a profitable business. But they’re finding it increasingly difficult to hire those people in states that protect non-compete agreements.

Experts say that the rise of Silicon Valley as the heart of the technology world is directly related to California’s refusal to enforce any non-compete agreements whatsoever.

A non-compete agreement is part of an employment contract that prevents a worker from leaving their employer to work for a competitor. There’s usually a geographical limit of a few miles and a time limit around six months to a year, but companies are increasingly leaving those limitations behind and simply preventing their workers from ever working for any competitor.

The practice started with high-level executives who could potentially take sensitive trade secrets directly to a competitor, thereby ruining their former employer’s prospects. But more and more companies have been expanding their use of non-competes to cover all their employees – from those earning minimum wage, all the way to the top of the corporation.

Employee advocacy groups have fought hard against the use and enforcement of non-compete agreements and Big Business has fought just as hard in their favor. Large corporations trying to hold onto their employees at any cost have started looking for ways to punish their employees for leaving, rather than enticing them to stay. Continue reading ›

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Since 1975, the ratio of intangible assets (ideas, copyright, intellectual property, etc.) to tangible assets (physical property) in the S&P 500 market value has increased dramatically. In 1975, intangible assets made up just 17% of the market value and have done nothing but increase, reaching 87% in 2015.

As of May 22, 2016, a new federal trade secrets law known as the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) went into effect and Illinois employers need to be prepared.

Although it’s a federal law that places higher restrictions on protecting intellectual property, it does not block state or local laws, such as the Illinois Trade Secrets Act (ITSA). That means an Illinois employer can file a federal DTSA lawsuit and a simultaneous ITSA lawsuit, which means, even if the federal lawsuit doesn’t go their way, they may still be able to collect damages and/or awards under the ITSA.

Alternatively, businesses can sue under the ITSA if the statue of limitations under the DTSA has expired. Under the DTSA, a lawsuit must be filed within three years of the discovery of the transgression, but the ITSA allows up to five years. Continue reading ›

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The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found the owner of the Akira retail chain didn’t violate federal and state law when it sent promotional text messages to customers who had provided their phone numbers. Nicole B. filed a class‐action lawsuit against Chicago‐based Bijora, Inc., which operates the Akira clothing stores, alleging that Akira’s practice of sending promotional text messages to customers violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.

Akira, which has over 20 stores in the Chicagoland area, used third-party text‐messaging software to inform its customers of promotions, discounts, and in‐store special events. Customers could opt in to its “Text Club” by providing their cell phone numbers to Akira representatives inside stores, texting “Akira” to a number posted in stores, or filling out an “Opt In Card.”

Akira collected cell numbers for over 20,000 customers and between 2009 and 2011, sent some 60 text messages advertising store promotions, parties, events, contests, sales, and giveaways to those customers, including Nicole B.

Nicole alleged that Akira violated TCPA’s prohibition against using an automatic telephone dialing system to make calls without the prior express consent of the recipient. The suit sought $1,500 for each of the 1.2 million texts sent, for a total of over $1.8 billion in statutory damages.

Summary judgment was granted on the trial court’s determination that Akira and its software provider had not used an autodialer to send the messages because human involvement was required in the platform’s text message transmission process. Continue reading ›

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Our Chicago automobile fraud and Lemon law attorneys near Plano, Plainfield, and Yorkville have experience representing victims of odometer roll backs, title washing, fake or improper certifications of rebuilt wrecks and other used car scams. We bring individual and class actions suits for defective cars with common design defects and auto dealer fraud and other car dealer scams such as selling rebuilt wrecks as certified used cars or misrepresenting a car as being in good condition when it is rebuilt wreck or had the odometer rolled back. We also see cases where new car dealers conceal that the car has been in accident while in their possession or used car dealers who put duck tape in back of the check engine light to conceal serious engine or emission problems.  Super Lawyers has selected our DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, Will and Cook County Illinois auto-fraud, car dealer fraud and lemon law lawyers as among the top 5% in Illinois. We only collect our fee if we win or settle your case. For a free consultation call our Chicago class action lawyers at our toll free number 630-333-0333 or contact us on the web by clicking here.

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Our Chicago automobile fraud and Lemon law attorneys near Wheaton, Waukegan and Gurnee have experience representing victims of odometer roll backs, title washing, fake or improper certifications of rebuilt wrecks and other used car scams. We bring individual and class actions suits for defective cars with common design defects and auto dealer fraud and other car dealer scams such as selling rebuilt wrecks as certified used cars or misrepresenting a car as being in good condition when it is rebuilt wreck or had the odometer rolled back. We also see cases where new car dealers conceal that the car has been in accident while in their possession or used car dealers who put duck tape in back of the check engine light to conceal serious engine or emission problems.  Super Lawyers has selected our DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, Will and Cook County Illinois auto-fraud, car dealer fraud and lemon law lawyers as among the top 5% in Illinois. We only collect our fee if we win or settle your case. For a free consultation call our Chicago class action lawyers at our toll free number 630-333-0333 or contact us on the web by clicking here.

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We’re all careful to try to avoid the dreaded overdraft fee. One wrong calculation and we could find ourselves facing hefty fines that just keep adding up until our next payday.

But the banks have rigged the system against us. They have decided to rearrange the order of our transactions so that our larger withdrawals are processed first, followed by smaller transactions, which then leave us with a negative balance in our checking account. When we do get paid again, the deposit gets applied to the overdraft fee before we can access the rest, meaning the bank is essentially paying itself first with our money.

To call overdraft fees counterproductive is an understatement. In many cases they lead to an endless cycle of debt, and unsurprisingly, it’s usually the people with the lowest income who are made to pay the vast majority of overdraft fees.

To make a bad situation worse, some banks (like Wells Fargo) refuse to settle the dispute in court. Instead, they included an arbitration clause in their customer contract that requires their clients to settle all legal disputes in arbitration – a system that was set up for (and benefits) businesses, rather than individuals.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) looked into the benefits and drawbacks for individuals trying to settle their disputes with large businesses in arbitration. The private process consistently benefited big businesses, despite business advocates claiming arbitration provides more benefits to individuals than the court system. The CFPB’s study found that most individuals simply gave up, rather than pursue the dispute in arbitration, especially in cases of small claim amounts, when the potential reward is significantly less than the costs of pursuing arbitration. Even when the individuals did succeed in obtaining an award (less than 10% of those filed) the relief provided was less than 15% of the value of their claim.

Because arbitration is not designed to handle class actions, individuals are forced to duke it out against big businesses on their own – hence the tendency to abandon small claims, which they could pursue if they were give then chance to combine their claims with other plaintiffs with similar grievances. Arbitration is also private, which means even if an individual does manage to beat the odds and obtain an award, other people in the same situation have no way of knowing about it, which puts another layer of restriction on the individuals’ opportunities for obtaining an award, especially if they’re not even aware they have a valid claim.

The CFPB is trying to put a stop to this by implementing a new rule banning banks from forcing their customers into arbitration agreements. It has the support of several U.S. Senators who got together to publish a letter of concern regarding banks’ arbitration agreements with their customers.

While other banks have agreed to settle their customers’ claims from overdraft fees, Wells Fargo continues to hold out against a class of consumers trying to force the bank to resolve the dispute in court, rather than arbitration. Courts have consistently ruled against Wells Fargo, but the bank is getting ready to bring their case before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping its judges might be more sympathetic to its case. If they take it all the way to the Supreme Court, we’ll get a final decision on the matter. Continue reading ›

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This Article gives an excellent over view of non-compete agreement law in various states. It summarizes the law for these agreements in the following states: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri and New York. It provides a number of insightful tips on how courts are likely to view non-compete agreements depending on the facts of the case.  For instance, it concludes, in our opinion accurately, that Illinois courts will likely be more likely to enforce non-compete agreements if the employee has engaged in some sort of wrongful behavior such as misappropriating confidential information or starting the competing business using the employer’s computers and other resources.

With regard the to Illinois the article states:

Illinois courts generally disfavor employer-employee restrictive covenants.  Consequently, courts look for reasons not to enforce restrictive covenants and the fact that an employee is “low level” often creates an equitable reason for the court to refuse to enforce restrictive covenants.  However, bad conduct by a former employee, whether by taking confidential information or poaching former customers of the former employer, often will overcome a court’s reluctance to enforce a restrictive covenant against a low-level employee.

Historically, Illinois courts only enforced such restrictive covenants if the employer could demonstrate it had a legitimate protectable interest. Courts defined legitimate protectable interest to include “near permanent customer relationships” or confidential information.  In 2011, the Illinois Supreme Court revisited this issue in Reliable Fire Equipment v. Arredondo, holding that an employer must demonstrate both a legitimate protectable interest and the reasonableness of the scope (activity, time and geographic).  However, the Reliable Fire court also held that an employer could establish a legitimate protectable interest in ways other than confidential information or long-standing customer relationships, creating further confusion in the Illinois legal landscape.  This ruling required trial courts faced with a motion for temporary restraining order seeking to restrain a former employee from competing to focus on what interest an employer is seeking to protect and whether that interest is sufficiently clear at a preliminary stage such that a TRO is justified.   Generally, Illinois courts have looked to two key issues in recent years—has the former employee “taken” confidential information and is the former employee using such confidential information to pursue his former employer’s clients.  If the answer to either of these questions is yes, Illinois courts are likely to enforce a restrictive covenant.

An interesting dilemma has arisen in the last four years since the Illinois Appellate Court decided Fifield v. Premier Dealers Services.  The Fifield court held that at-will employment is inadequate consideration to support restrictive covenants until at least two years of at-will employment have passed since the agreement was put in effect.  This creates another hurdle for enforcing restrictive covenants against lower-level employees. Most low-level employees are employees at will.  Consequently, for an employer to be confident that its restrictive covenants will not fail for lack of consideration, some unrestricted consideration (e.g., a signing bonus) must be provided at the outset of the employment relationship.

Continue reading ›

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Many people have long given up the hope of having any privacy when we’re online. From cookies to tracking search results to targeted advertising, it’s pretty widely accepted that the internet is not a private place, although many users continue to insist internet companies stop tracking our every move.

Back in 2010, Facebook was storing digital cookies on consumers’ internet browsers and using those cookies to track the users’ visits to other sites that contained Facebook’s “like” button (which allows viewers to post a like of the article or website to their Facebook account without leaving the page). The tracking continued even after users had logged out of their Facebook accounts.

Facebook had promised consumers it would delete the cookies, but the company continued to access information on the cookies until 2011, when an independent researcher brought the issue to the attention of the public. At that point, a class of plaintiffs sued Facebook for allegedly violating federal and California state privacy laws by using the cookies. The time period for the lawsuit goes from April 2010, when the company said it had stopped using cookies, to September 2011, when the tech giant actually stopped using the cookies after it had been outed.

Although a lot can change in five years, the plaintiffs are still pursuing their claims against Facebook, having revised their allegations after the judge dismissed their original claims in the fall of 2015. Continue reading ›

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