A Chicago federal judge has refused to force Viamedia, a New York-based seller of local cable TV advertising, to turn over documents Comcast believes would shed light on Viamedia’s efforts to use third-party litigation funding to fund its antitrust legal claims against Comcast, and to urge the federal government to also take action against the telecom giant.
After their first attempt to obtain a court order to compel a rewrite of the state's education funding rules was rebuffed, the Chicago Public Schools have renewed their legal challenge, again asking a Cook County judge to force changes in a school funding system they call discriminatory.
A divided Illinois Supreme Court has let stand a lower court’s decision to allow lawyers to earn fees – even fees that appear overly large, compared to the amount of work being done – from real estate title companies, despite accusations that the fee-splitting arrangements amount to little more than a kickback scheme.
Saying the demands sought by the Chicago Public Schools “would inject widespread chaos into the entirety of the State’s public education system,” a Cook County judge has denied the request by CPS and other plaintiffs to force the state to funnel more money into Chicago’s public education system, dismissing a lawsuit CPS said it brought to address systemic and illegal discrimination within the state of Illinois’ educational funding system.
Comcast has not violated federal anti-monopoly law by refusing to allow the competitor of one of its subsidiary companies to act as a middleman on the sale of local cable advertising, a federal judge has ruled.
Saying Illinois state government has created a funding imbalance, in part, by requiring the Chicago Public Schools to divert money from education to fund worker pensions, when it places no similar demands on the state’s other school districts, CPS has now asked the courts to step in and force the state to rewrite its school funding rules.
The city of Chicago cannot require car rental businesses located outside city limits to collect city taxes on rental cars leased by Chicago city residents, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled, striking down as unconstitutional a city ordinance seeking to slap a tax on cars rented within three miles of Chicago city limits.
A Chicago federal judge has signed off on a $4.25 million settlement to end years of litigation between financial investment firm Northern Trust Co. and a host of public worker retirement plans in Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S. over claims Northern Trust’s allegedly risky investment decisions had led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the retirement programs when markets crashed at the onset of the Great Recession.
About a month since a federal judge dismissed its lawsuit against Rabobank for allegedly cornering the bankruptcy banking services market through an alliance with a developer of bankruptcy case management software, a Chicago law firm has reintroduced its allegations, this time in a class action antitrust lawsuit directed at the software maker it alleges has conspired with its competitors to overcharge those depositing bankruptcy funds.
A federal judge has tossed a Chicago lawyer’s class action lawsuit against online attorney directory Avvo, ruling Avvo’s lawyer listings are protected by the First Amendment, and don’t break an Illinois law which forbids the use of personal information, without consent, for profit.
A Chicago tour boat company is asking a Cook County circuit judge to rule a Cook County administrative law judge was right to say the county can’t apply an amusement tax on the company’s Chicago River and Lake Michigan boat tours, but to find the administrative law judge did so for the wrong reason – a move which could also spell taxing trouble for the operators of Chicago’s walking tours.
A Chicago personal injury and medical malpractice law firm has taken to the courts against a Baltimore-based personal injury firm it says stiffed them out of millions of dollars in fees under a case referral deal.
Faced with the possibility the class action lawsuit could be transferred to a court more than 2,000 miles away in the Pacific Northwest, the lawyers suing online attorney directory Avvo have swapped in a different Chicago attorney, who also is the son of a once-powerful Chicago alderman, to replace the original named plaintiff, whose history with Avvo could have triggered provisions in Avvo’s user agreement, which could have kicked the case to a federal court in Seattle.
The Illinois Supreme Court has shied away from ruling on a question brought by a group of electricity suppliers, who had asked the court to limit the power of the Illinois Commerce Commission to dictate from whom the suppliers must buy their electricity, ruling the question became moot when a largescale coal power plant project folded for lack of funds.
A Chicago dentist, who sued a Chicago television station and one of its news reporters for allegedly smearing him in an investigative report, appears to have quietly settled his legal action.
A northwest suburban woman who claimed she was duped by the advertising slogan on a box of breakfast biscuits lost her attempt at filing a class-action lawsuit when a federal judge dismissed her claim.
A judge has switched off a court challenge by an Internet company that wants to retransmit the programming of WTTW – Chicago's PBS station – to online users, saying the company isn’t authorized to do so, because it doesn’t meet the required federal definition of a "cable system" and thus is infringing on WTTW's copyright.
The father of a physically disabled Evanston Township High School track athlete, who doesn’t need a wheelchair, is seeking a federal injunction to force the Illinois High School Association to give his son and other runners like him a different qualifying time – as it also gives wheelchair-bound athletes – so they can compete equally in state championships alongside non-disabled competitors.
Kraft Foods will need to continue to fight an action brought by federal commodities trading regulators after a federal judge refused to toss the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s lawsuit alleging the food company improperly manipulated wheat prices to their benefit.
A Chicago federal judge has said no dice to a legal malpractice action brought against Michigan-based Dickinson Wright by the Illinois developers of an Oklahoma casino, dismissing the lawsuit because the developers ultimately beat an attorney general’s complaint the developers alleged was brought because of bad legal advice. The malpractice suit was filed in 2013 by MCZ Development and Sheffield Development Partners, and Golden Canyon Partners.
