Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
An Illinois appeals court recently held that the plaintiffs in a commercial litigation lawsuit could not sustain claims for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, and tortious interference with contract because the claims were untimely. The Court also affirmed dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims for respondeat superior liability, prejudgment interest and attorney’s fees on the basis that the substantive underlying claims were untimely or had been released by the plaintiffs.
The appeal stemmed from a November 2016 lawsuit filed by Edward Shrock, a minority owner of the company Baby Supermall, LLC, against the company’s bank and the bank’s vice president for allegedly aiding the company’s majority owner, Robert Meier, in using the company as his “personal piggy bank” and misappropriating millions of dollars from the company during a decade-long scheme. According to Schrock’s complaint the company was eventually driven to insolvency as a result of Meier’s scheme.
The 2016 lawsuit followed on the heels of another lawsuit Schrock filed against Meier in 2009, which alleged nearly the same underlying facts as alleged in the 2016 lawsuit against the bank. In the 2009 suit, Schrock won an injunction enjoining Meier and his family from taking payments from the company under certain “profit-sharing” plans Meier had drafted and entered with the company. Following entry of the injunction in the 2009 case, Schrock won an approximately $11 million jury verdict against Meier, which Schrock later released in 2018 even though the judgment had only been partially satisfied. Continue reading ›