Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog

Super Lawyers named Chicago and Oak Brook business trial attorneys Peter Lubin and Vincent DiTommaso Super Lawyers in the Categories of Class Action, Business Litigation and Consumer Rights Litigation. DiTommaso-Lubin's Oak Brook and Chicago business trial lawyers have over a quarter of century of experience in litigating complex class action, consumer rights and business and commercial litigation disputes. We handle emergency business law suits 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.

Vincent L. DiTommaso

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Peter S. Lubin

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DiTommaso-Lubin's Wheaton, Naperville, and Hinsdale 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 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 sucessfully as possible, helping business clients protect their investements and get back to business as usual. From offices in Oak Brook, near Aurora and Elgin, we serve clients throughout Illinois and the Midwest.

If you’re facing a business or class-action lawsuit, or the possibility of one, and you’d like to discuss how the experienced Illinois business dispute attorneys at DiTommaso-Lubin can help, we would like to hear from you. To set up a consultation with one of our Chicago class action attorneys and Chicago business trial lawyers, please call us toll-free at 1-877-990-4990 or contact us through the Internet.

Continue reading "Workers Defense Project Documentary " »

Continue reading "Construction Workers File Class Action to Obtain Unpaid Overtime" »

Crain's Chicago Business published an insightful investigative report on the problem of wage theft in the Chicago area.

The article states:

The effects of wage theft bleed out further, robbing the local economy of consumer spending, says Mr. Theodore, the author of the UIC study. Low-income families are more likely to spend their paychecks quickly on goods and services. When they don't receive their wages, retailers and other merchants lose out. Lost sales also mean lost sales tax revenues for state and local governments. Those same governments are called on to fill the gap when underpaid workers can't make ends meet. A UIC study released in August found that a quarter of warehouse workers employed in Will County relied on government assistance to cover basic needs. The report concludes that paying low wages to temporary workers—if they're paid at all—”effectively shifts the burden of supporting families to the public.”

This holiday season, like every year, religious organizations across the country will distribute turkeys and other food to needy families, says Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a national workers rights group based in Chicago. But if those workers received all their pay, many could buy their own turkeys. People argue that in a time of economic crisis, workers should just be grateful to have a job and that society should do nothing that might burden employers during a recession, Ms. Bobo says. But it's exactly because times are hard that workers need all the wages they are owed.

You can read the full article by clicking here.

Continue reading "Crain's Chicago Business's Expose and Investigative Report on the Problem of Wage Theft in the Chicago Area" »

Continue reading "Video -- Wage Theft : The Crime Wave No One Talks About " »

Our lawyers are passionate about protecting the rights of workers and are constantly researching new wage and hour decisions rendered by the federal courts here in Illinois. Our Buffalo Grove overtime class-action attorneys recently discovered a case that impacts potential clients seeking to certify wage and hour class actions under the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The Plaintiff in Russell v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co. worked at Defendant's call center in Arlington Heights, Illinois for five years and was paid hourly wages, commissions, and bonuses. Plaintiff and the other purported class members all had scheduled shifts and lunch breaks, but allegedly were required to perform work tasks both before their shifts and during their lunch breaks. Plaintiffs were not paid for the work they performed pre-shift and during lunch breaks, and filed suit for their unpaid wages. The trial court then conditionally certified the class, and additional discovery commenced.

Through discovery, Plaintiffs learned that Defendant has a written policy that hourly employees must obtain permission from a supervisor before working overtime and any employee who works overtime must be compensated accordingly. Defendant's Code of Business Conduct also explicitly states that “managers are prohibited from requiring nonexempt employees to work off the clock.” However, after deposing 24 individual Plaintiffs, the record showed that the majority of Plaintiffs had to spend time logging into their computer systems prior to the start of their shift because their supervisors had instructed them to be “open and available” at the start of their shift. To be “open and available,” Plaintiffs had to boot up their computers and get several applications up and running. This system start-up process took between three and twenty minutes to complete depending upon the individual computer.

In addition to the pre-shift issues, the record showed that Plaintiffs would often have to work a few minutes past the end of their shifts to finish handling calls already in progress. Because Defendant has a policy that any overtime worked in an amount less than eight minutes is not compensable and many of the post-shift calls are resolved in less than eight minutes after the end of their shift, Plaintiffs were not compensated for the overtime worked while finishing calls at the end of the day.

After more discovery and the deposition of thirty-nine individual Plaintiffs, Defendants moved to decertify the class based upon individual issues embedded in the case and the absence of a company-wide policy that violates the FLSA. The Court found that the class members shared enough of a factual and legal nexus that pursuing a class-action was proper through the use of subclasses where necessary. The Court went on to decertify the individual claims that did not fall into the enumerated subclasses of pre-shift overtime, post-shift overtime, and work performed while on lunch breaks. Finally, the Court stated that due to the large amount of discovery still to be performed, that they reserved the right to revisit the decertification issue should it become apparent that the case was unmanageable as a class-action.

Continue reading "Class Members Don't Need Identical Claims to Maintain a Class-Action Under the FLSA" »