Articles Posted in Best Business And Class Action Lawyers Near Chicago

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The Seventh Circuit in a recently issued decision held that an employer cannot invoke an arbitration provision to evade a shareholder class-action lawsuit seeking broad relief under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a federal law aimed at protecting participants in private employer retirement plans. In its decision, the Court found that claims under ERISA are generally subject to arbitration, but ultimately concluded that the District Court did not err in denying the defendants’ motion to compel arbitration of plaintiff’s class action under section 1132(a)(2) of ERISA due to a class action waiver in the arbitration agreement that would have precluded the plaintiff from asserting certain statutory rights.

The plaintiff, James Smith, worked for Triad Manufacturing, a shelving and fixture company, back in 2015 and 2016. While employed by Triad, he participated in the company’s employee stock ownership program, known as a “defined contribution plan” under ERISA. Triad’s board of directors created the plan for its employees in early December 2015.

According to his lawsuit, after forming the plan, three members of Triad’s board sold all Triad’s stock to the plan at a price of $58.05 per share, totaling more than $106 million. Four days later the board appointed GreatBanc Trust Company as plan trustee. GreatBanc then approved the transaction, seemingly after it had already occurred. Less than two weeks later, Triad’s share price dropped to $1.85, according to the plan’s financial statements. In effect, what had been valued at over $106 million plummeted in two weeks to just under $4 million. The suit alleges that the earliest the plan’s members could sell their shares was the end of 2016 due to vesting requirements, at which time the shares were worth only $1.15. By the end of 2018, the share price had dipped to less than $1 per share. Continue reading ›

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The Nazis viewed modern art as “degenerate” and therefore confiscated whatever pieces of art they found to be “degenerate,” but that didn’t stop them from profiting off those pieces of art.

While the Nazi party refused to display artwork it did not approve of in German museums, they saw nothing wrong with selling the artwork to foreign buyers, which is how many pieces of art confiscated by the Nazis came to be displayed in American museums. That puts those museums in a morally uncomfortable position.

While the Nazis claim they “confiscated” works of art from its citizens, the truth is that they stole the artwork and used the proceeds from selling it to fund a fascist regime that killed millions of people.

In general, American museums recognize that artworks “confiscated” by Nazis are stolen, and that the Nazis had no legal right to sell them. As a result, American museums have returned many pieces of stolen artwork to the heirs of their original owners or creators, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art is still hanging on to “Composition with Blue” by Piet Mondrian, which was “confiscated” by the Nazis and sold to an American during WWII.

Mondrian had given the painting to Sophie Küppers, a German art historian and dealer, shortly after he completed it in 1926. The next year, Küppers moved to the Soviet Union, leaving the painting in Hanover at the Provinzialmuseum. After the Nazis came to power, they “confiscated” the painting, whereupon it was given to Karl Buchholz to sell to a foreign buyer.

Buchholz had a business partner, Curt Valentin, who was based in New York, so Buchholz sent the painting to Valentin to be sold in the United States. Valentin sold it to an art collector named Albert E. Gallatin. Continue reading ›

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Patrick Austermuehle of our firm filed an Amicus Brief on behalf of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and the National Association of Consumer Advocates on a important access to justice issue for consumers who have been defrauded including consumers who have been scammed by used car dealers.

Who Are ITLA and NACA?

The National Association of Consumer Advocates (“NACA”) is a nonprofit corporation whose members are lawyers, law professors, and students practicing or studying consumer-protection law. NACA’s mission is to promote justice for consumers through information sharing among consumer advocates and to serve as a voice for its members and consumers in the struggle to curb unfair and oppressive business practices.

The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (“ITLA”) is a statewide organization whose members focus their practices in representing injured consumers and workers. Founded in 1952, the organization
has more than 2,000 members. ITLA’s principles and mission are simple: to achieve and maintain high standards of professional ethics, competency and demeanor in the bench and bar; to uphold the Constitutions of the United States of America and the State of Illinois; to secure and protect the rights of those injured in their persons or civil rights; to defend trial by jury and the
adversarial system of justice; to promote fair, prompt and efficient administration of justice; and to educate and train in the art of advocacy. Continue reading ›

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In 1964 the case of New York Times v. Sullivan reached the Supreme Court, which interpreted the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to mean public figures have a higher bar to clear when suing for libel.

The intention of the First Amendment is to give citizens the freedom to voice their opinion and publicly discuss public figures. At first, this just meant political officials, since the founding fathers saw the value in people being able to publicly debate and gain access to information on the people they would be voting into office. But subsequent rulings have expanded the actual malice doctrine to apply to public figures as well, including entertainers.

Because public figures are subject to a certain amount of public scrutiny, it makes sense for them to bear a higher burden of proof when suing for defamation and/or libel. Not only do they have to be able to prove the claim was false, they also have to prove that the person making the statement knew it was false at the time they made it, and that they made the false statement with the intention of causing financial harm to the plaintiff, hence the term “actual malice doctrine”. Now two Supreme Court justices are saying it’s time to reevaluate that ruling.

The two justices calling for a reexamination of the actual malice doctrine are Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, both of whom cite the modern news media landscape as having influenced their views on the actual malice doctrine and whether it should apply to all public figures.

Although we have long been told not to believe everything we see online, not only do many people believe what they see on the internet, they often act on what they see without bothering to verify those claims. Justice Thomas pointed to a New York Times article that described how someone might need to set up a home security system after being called things like “thief” or “pedophile” online, even if those claims are false. The person making those claims might not realize they’re false and/or might have no intention of causing financial harm to their target, but nevertheless, the harm is done. Does that mean the target of the vitriol should be able to sue the person making the false statements? Continue reading ›

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A manufacturing plant may have closed four years ago, but according to multiple lawsuits, the effects of the alleged mismanagement of dangerous chemicals used at the plant are still affecting residents of the area surrounding the now-defunct plant.

The plant in Tioga, LA opened in 1961 and made pressure relief valves for the oil and gas industry. The plant was sold to and absorbed by various companies over the years, and the plant was finally shut down for good in 2017 after the company that owned and ran it was absorbed by General Electric Oil & Gas in 2010, and the two companies combined became known as GE-Dresser.

In November of 2011, when the plant was still up and running, a fire hydrant near the plant broke and water filled an area that had been excavated for repairs. According to some of the recent lawsuits, a chemical sheen could be seen on the surface of the standing water.

A few months later, GE-Dresser notified the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) about a spill at the plant that had resulted in trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE) getting released into the ground around the plant. The chemicals are used to clean grease from metal, and neither exists naturally, but has to be made in a lab.

The LDEQ installed monitoring wells to test the soil and groundwater for dangerous levels of TCE and PCE, but allegedly did nothing to notify residents about the possibility that toxic chemicals had been released into their environment until January of 2020, when the department first learned about the contamination levels in the Aurora Park subdivision. Some residents claim they weren’t notified of the contamination until months later in 2020. Continue reading ›

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Paying college tuition has long been a struggle for many aspiring students and their families, but when it comes to paying for college, tuition is just the beginning. The cost of textbooks and other school supplies is another financial hurdle, and according to an antitrust lawsuit, some of the biggest on-campus bookstore chains and publishers of college textbooks have deliberately created and taken advantage of the Inclusive Access program to monopolize the market on college textbooks and raise prices.

The Inclusive Access program requires students to buy one-time access codes to access textbooks and course materials online. Because the access codes only work once, students are required to buy into the program each semester, meaning they can’t reuse textbooks or any other online materials they (or other students) already used in another class. Because all the materials are available online, the program is less expensive than buying new, hard-copy textbooks, but more expensive than buying used, hard-copy textbooks.

The lawsuit was filed by college students, independent bookstores, and online textbooks retailers against Barnes and Noble Education, Follett Higher Education Group, Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education. According to the lawsuit, the textbook publishers and major retailers are collectively making $3 billion annually from their sales through the Inclusive Access program. At the same time, the lawsuit alleges, the same program raised prices for hundreds of thousands of students, requiring them to pay for the online access code to get all their class materials, instead of getting some of their textbooks used, which would allegedly have saved them money. Continue reading ›

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How do we know how much a piece of art is worth? For most of us, a professional art appraiser or auction house gives us a number or price range, but that number is based partly on how much the artwork sold for the last time it changed hands, and it turns out determining that number is more tricky than it might initially appear to be.

To start with, who’s really buying the artwork? An auction house or dealer might say that sold a piece to a particular collector, but they rarely meet the collector in person. Instead, they deal with a “friend” of a collector, but that “friend” might turn out to be an “independent agent” who buys the artwork from the auction house or dealer for one price and sells it to someone else at a higher price.

Buyers and sellers are frequently shell companies, rather than individual agents, taking advantage of the secrecy inherent in the art world to conceal their identity.

Most investors would never consider investing millions (much less billions) into an industry with so much secrecy because such secrecy leaves the industry ripe for fraud. But in the case of the art world, it is that very secrecy that makes it so appealing to certain investors.

To combat the fraud that some say has become rampant in the world of art collecting, some people are saying it’s time we treat art dealers and auction houses more like we treat banks.

Banks are already required by law to identify their customers and where their wealth is coming from, as well as any transactions involving more than $10,000 in cash. Now the federal government is considering applying that same law to the art world. The new law would put an end to shell companies acting as collectors, or allegedly buying on behalf of collectors. Continue reading ›

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The Illinois Supreme Court’s recent decision in a foreclosure action could have far-reaching implications for litigations within the state. In a 5-2 decision, the Court ruled that anyone seeking to serve a defendant in Cook County via special process server must first secure a Cook County judge’s authorization for the summons to be valid.

The case arose from a foreclosure action in Kankakee County. In the underlying case, the plaintiff Municipal Trust and Savings Bank filed a complaint for mortgage foreclosure against defendant Dennis J. Moriarty in December 2016 and issued summons from Kankakee County, where the mortgaged commercial properties are located. A special process server ultimately served the defendant at Rush Hospital in Chicago, which is located in Cook County. Upon the plaintiff’s motion, the circuit court entered a judgment for foreclosure and sale. Following entry of the foreclosure judgment, a sheriff’s sale was held on the property, and plaintiff was the successful bidder. The bank then filed a motion for confirmation of the foreclosure sale.

The defendant filed a Section 2-1401 petition challenging the judgment as void arguing that the circuit court was without personal jurisdiction to enter the default judgment in the foreclosure proceeding. The Defendant asserted that under section 2-202 of the Code, a special process server cannot serve process on a defendant in Cook County without first being appointed by the circuit court. The circuit court denied the defendant’s section 2-1401 petition finding that the special process server was not required to be specially appointed to serve process on the defendant. The appellate court affirmed. The defendant petitioned for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, which granted his petition. Continue reading ›

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In a recent order issued in the case of PNC Capital LLC v. TCode, Inc., the trial court swatted down the plaintiff’s excuses for refusing to answer jurisdictional discovery sought by the defendant and ultimately awarded sanctions against the plaintiff after finding that it lacked any substantial justification for its refusal to respond to essential jurisdictional discovery in order to thwart plaintiff’s constitutional right to remove the case to federal court based on diversity of citizenship. The order provides a cautionary tale for plaintiffs who wish to object to discovery issued by another party.

On September 4, 2020, the plaintiff in the case, PNC Capital LLC, which does business under the names Procuretechstaff Consulting Services and PTS Consulting Services, filed a three-count complaint against the defendant, TCode, Inc., in the Cook County state court alleging Breach of Restrictive Covenant (Count I), Tortious Interference with Contract (Count II), and Breach of Non-compete Agreement (Count III). The plaintiff has sought monetary damages of $104,000.

In response, the defendant requested that the plaintiff disclose the plaintiff’s members’ identity and state of citizenship. The purpose of the discovery was to determine if the case was eligible for removal to federal court. To be eligible for removal, the defendant would need to establish a valid basis for federal jurisdiction. In this case, the defendant sought to determine if the requirements for diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §1332 were met. This requires establishing that the parties are completely diverse (i.e. citizens of different states) and an amount in controversy of more than $75,000. Plaintiff refused to comply, relying on a purported agreement with the defendant’s former counsel to exclusive jurisdiction in state court and venue in the Circuit Court of Cook County.

The requirements for removal of a lawsuit from state court to federal court are found in 28 U.S.C. §1446 and provides that a defendant seeking removal must file its notice of removal within 30 days following service of the complaint. However, if the pleadings do not make it clear whether the requirements for removal are met, a defendant must promptly investigate whether the case may be removed. Under such circumstances, the 30-day clock for removal does not begin to count down until the defendant receives information “from which it may first be ascertained that the case is one which is or has become removable.” 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b)(3).

In this case, the plaintiff was a limited liability company. For the purposes of invoking federal diversity jurisdiction, the citizenship of a limited liability company is based on the citizenship of each of its members. Thus, determining whether the case was removable required the defendant to identify each of the plaintiff’s members and their respective citizenships. Jurisdictional discovery is designed to obtain just this sort of information. A plaintiff is not at liberty to conceal facts necessary to the determination of whether the suit is removable or engage in a scheme to preclude the defendant’s timely removal. Rooflifters, LLC v. Nautilus Ins. Co., 13 C 3251, 2013 WL 3975382, at *3–6 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 1, 2013). Continue reading ›

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A truck manufacturer was agreed to a settlement after it was sued for selling trucks with defective engines. Two members of the litigation class had filed separate suits against the company in state court. After the settlement was finalized, the manufacturer sought to have those suits dismissed. The plaintiffs attempted to intervene in the court where the settlement was approved, seeking to opt-out of the terms of the settlement. The district court refused and the plaintiffs appealed. The appellate panel affirmed the decision of the district court. The panel found that the plaintiffs had not shown that their decision to refrain from timely objecting to the settlement was an excusable one. The panel determined that the plaintiffs were attempting to obtain the benefit of both the settlement and their separate litigation, as a way of receiving whichever of the judgments was larger. The panel found that the district court did not abuse its discretion in binding the plaintiffs to the terms of the settlement.

A class of owners accused Navistar of selling trucks with defective engines. The suit was settled for $135 million. In June 2019, the district court gave the settlement its preliminary approval. Before the approval could become final, the court had to notify class members of their right to opt out, and it needed to consider any substantive objections by class members who elected to be bound by the settlement. In August 2019 such a notice was sent to all class members. The court held a fairness hearing in November 2019 and rejected some objections to the settlement. In January 2020 the court entered a final judgment implementing the settlement. Continue reading ›

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