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A plaintiff seeking to recover on a breach of fiduciary duty claim against a business partner must be able to show more than just evidence of his partner’s bad conduct, but must also demonstrate that he suffered measurable damages as a result of the conduct.

For almost a decade, JAP, Inc. and Today’s Sushi Corp. jointly owned and operated trendy Chicago eatery Sushi Wabi, cashing in on the burgeoning national sushi craze. In 1998, Angelo G., owner of JAP, and Angela L. and Susan T., owners of Today’s Sushi, entered a limited partnership agreement to open the Randolph Street restaurant, with each entity owning about half of the enterprise. The venture capitalized on Angela and Susan’s experience operating sushi restaurants, with JAP providing most of the investment funds. The partnership agreement gave each partner full power of management and control of the operation of the business by unanimous consent. Angelo’s brother Franco was made manager of Sushi Wabi and put in charge of daily decision-making, with Angelo to be consulted on “major” decisions. Things soured when Angela and Susan attempted to remove Franco as manager. JAP brought breach of fiduciary duty and conversion claims against the pair, and filed for an accounting and dissolution of the partnership. In its complaint, JAP alleged 19 separate bases for breach of fiduciary duty and demanded consequential and punitive damages. Continue reading ›

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In the court system of the United States, it is possible for plaintiffs who have not suffered a measurable injury but have suffered an intangible injury such as invasion of privacy or loss to reputation or humiliation to file a lawsuit against another party. This means even if the plaintiff has not been physically injured or suffered any financial loss, they might still have an opportunity to make someone pay up for violating the law.

Most laws come with statutory provisions in which the statutory penalty for breaking the law is often written into the legislature itself. Sometimes it’s a defined number and other times it’s a range. Either way, they provide an opportunity for plaintiffs who have not lost anything tangible to file claims.

Businesses lately have been complaining about a slew of consumer class action lawsuits that focus on what they claim are mere technical violations of the law. One such case is that of Thomas Robins against Spokeo Inc., a people search engine. Robins alleged Spokeo had violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by posting that he was employed, wealthy, and married, when in fact he was single and struggling to find work. Continue reading ›

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Americans love our convenience, but it often comes with a cost, even when we’re not aware of it. One example of the ways in which food manufacturers have catered to this desire for convenience is by selling pre-grated parmesan cheese so that it’s ready to go straight from the grocery store into a recipe or on top of pasta. It makes shopping for and using parmesan cheese much easier, but there’s a catch. There’s no way of knowing if what you’re eating is really cheese.

In 2012 the FDA found evidence that Castle Cheese Inc. was including non-dairy substances in its Parmesan cheese products. The FDA issued stern warnings, including accusations that Castle’s products marketed as Parmesan and romano were actually a mixture of various cheeses and other ingredients.

Castle, which insists that their consumers were never harmed and that it was merely a mislabeling issue, eventually went bankrupt. but the allegations against Castle have spread to other manufacturers of grated parmesan cheese.

One of the most common additives to grated parmesan is cellulose, an anti-clumping agent made from wood chips. Acceptable levels of cellulose range from 2-4%, but the FDA’s investigations have found much higher concentrations in various food products. Continue reading ›

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If you need to ask whether or not you can do a certain thing, the answer is probably no. When Thomas Dotoli and his wife drafted a contract to sell their companies to their daughter-in-law, Cheryl, they included a clause that allowed a court to modify the non-compete agreement if the court deemed it to be too broad. But not all courts have the authority to rewrite contracts.

Non-compete agreements are pretty standard in most business contracts. They’re designed to protect the business interests of both parties, ideally without infringing too much on the other party’s legitimate business interests.

In the contract in question, Cheryl, as the owner and operator of Associated Beverage Systems of the Carolinas, was prevented from doing business in either North Carolina or South Carolina for a period of five years after purchasing the companies from the Dotolis for $10,000. The contract provided that a court could revise the terms of the agreement if it found them to be unreasonable.

When Associated Beverage began conducting business in both North and South Carolina, the Dotolis sued Cheryl, her company, and Loudine, their son and Cheryl’s husband, for tortious interference as well as deceptive and unfair practices. Loudine was charged with breach of contract. Continue reading ›

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It’s almost always newsworthy when a friend or family member of a wealthy celebrity publishes a “tell all” book or files a lawsuit against the celebrity in question or against other people close to the celebrity. But all this gossip has to be taken with a grain of salt, especially if the person making the accusations never bothered to make them until after they were cut off from the celebrity. Money is a powerful motivator for a lot of people and it’s common for some to lash out after having been cut off.

The 92-year-old Sumner M. Redstone, a media mogul with a $42 billion media empire that includes CBS and Viacom, has been accused by his ex-girlfriend and long-time friend of losing his mental competence. The friend is 51-year-old Manuela Herzer, who first started dating Redstone back in 2000 when he was in the process of getting divorced from his first wife. Redstone asked Herzer to marry him, and although she turned him down, the two remained good friends and Herzer has reportedly been active in Redstone’s entertainment companies.

Herzer received gifts, real estate money, and tens of millions of dollars in cash from Redstone. She even moved into his $20 million mansion at his request, and he gave her the mansion in his will, along with an addition $50 million. Herzer helped make healthcare decisions for Redstone, along with Sydney Holland, whom he was dating at the time. Holland was ejected from the home in 2015 after admitting to having been unfaithful, at which point Herzer said she took over the management of Redstone’s healthcare.

That all ended suddenly last October when Herzer was ejected from both the mansion and Redstone’s will in one fell swoop. Continue reading ›

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Sports teams often make more money from the merchandise and apparel they sell, stamped with the team name and logo, than they do tickets to games. As a result, it makes sense that they have a vested interest in protecting the right to put their name and logo on clothing and merchandise, but a patent on the name of a state seems to many people to be a step too far.

The University of Kentucky, home to the basketball team, the Wildcats, is claiming that it purchased the patent for putting “Kentucky” on any clothing back in 1997. So when Colin Fultz filed for a trademark of his business’s name, “Kentucky Mist Moonshine,” he received a cease and desist letter from the University of Kentucky. The University says it does not object to the name of the whiskey, only to the word “Kentucky” being put on promotional hats, T-shirts, etc.

Fultz’s business is a distillery that makes and sells fruit-infused whiskey and he has had to fight for his business since it was still just a concept. His hometown of Whitesburg was a dry town up until 2007, so when Fultz started taking the first steps to getting his business up and running a few years ago, the City Council needed some convincing that the town was ready, not just for alcohol, but for a distillery. Fultz thought the biggest hurdle was over when the City Council just barely voted to let him have his distillery, but that was just the beginning.

The athletic official for the University of Kentucky, Mr. Schlafer, said they intended for the letter to open up negotiations between Fultz and the University. He insists the local college, which makes about $123 million every year from the athletic department, has a right to protect the Wildcat brand. Continue reading ›

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Our Chicago automobile fraud and Lemon law attorneys near Lombard, Lisle and Elmhurst 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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Flood cars belong in a junkyard not in your garage.  We sue used car dealers who scam you

into buying a flooded car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f2fvRXWieg

Continue reading ›

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Have you ever wondered if that bank fee or overdraft charge from your bank was legal? If you tried to challenge your bank in a court of law, chances are you found out you had signed an arbitration agreement, which meant you could not settle the dispute in a court of law. Instead, you had to go through arbitration to accuse your bank of charging illegal fees or mismanaging your money.

If you choose to use arbitration, you have to cover all your legal fees yourself, which can quickly reach thousands of dollars. If you believe your bank has illegally taken funds out of your account, the chances are the amount they took was negligible. Three dollars for an overdraft fee may not seem like much, but for some people it can mean passing on a box of groceries. Even if it’s not much for the individual consumer, if the bank is improperly charging these types of fees to a large portion of its customers, it’s probably making a fortune illegally. Continue reading ›

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It’s a story that never gets old: the small-town attorney goes after the massive corporation. Only in this case, the massive corporation is the famous rock band Led Zeppelin. And the fight is over one of the most iconic songs of all time: Stairway to Heaven.

According to the recent lawsuit, filed in 2014 in Los Angeles, California, the writers of the famous song, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, allegedly missappropriated the iconic opening arpeggio from a song called Taurus, by a much more obscure band called Spirit.

According to the lawsuit, Taurus was released in 1968. Towards the end of that same year, Led Zeppelin was just starting to make a name for itself. They played with Spirit in their first U.S. concert in Denver, Colorado, although it’s not clear whether Spirit played Taurus that night. Either way, Stairway to Heaven was released three years later and Randy Wolfe’s name was nowhere to be found in the credits.

Wolfe, who went by the stage name Randy California, was a guitarist and the writer of Taurus. He died in 1997, but before his death, he had said in interviews that he felt cheated because he had never been given credit for Led Zeppelin’s famous song. When Wolfe died, his song rights went into a trust that is currently overseen Mick Skidmore, a former fellow music writer.

Skidmore agreed with the claim that Wolfe should have been given credit for Stairway to Heaven, and a cut of the massive royalties to go along with it, but he felt the case was hopeless. He was discouraged from going up against Led Zeppelin, which has acquired a massive fortune, and continues to do so through royalties for their songs. Skidmore said he just doesn’t have the resources to take them on in court. Continue reading ›

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