The Chicago Commission on Human Relations acted properly in awarding more than $68,000 in legal fees to a lesbian couple who had complained their building’s owners association had harassed and discriminated against them for being lesbians, a state appeals panel has ruled.
A former Boy Scout, whose Scoutmaster sexually abused him between 1983 and 1986, can pursue his lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America despite not filing his original complaint until 2013.
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, a United Kingdom-based company whose U.S. operations are headquartered in Philadelphia, will need to face legal action in Cook County court over claims its drug, Paxil, caused birth defects, after an appeals court ruled local state courts have jurisdiction under Illinois law to preside over the lawsuits – even complaints brought by plaintiffs who have no significant connection to Illinois.
A state appeals court has agreed a compliance officer misinterpreted an arbitrator’s award, so a state labor panel was not wrong in overturning the officer’s decision to order the village of Oak Lawn to pay its firefighters $3 million more.
A man who claimed someone had fraudulently run up more than $2,500 in debt on a credit card opened in his name without his knowledge has secured another chance to press a lawsuit against a suburban debt collection agency, after a state appeals panel found the agency may have broken federal debt collection laws by suing the man over the contested debt after the statute of limitations had expired.
Condominium owners who wish to challenge the legality of fees charged by their properties’ owners associations don’t get two chances in court to do so, an Illinois state appellate panel has found, upholding a Cook County judge’s dismissal of an evicted condo owner’s suit over association assessment late fees, saying the owner should have raised the issue when he was evicted three years before. The appellate order was filed Dec. 17 under Supreme Court Rule 23.
Park Ridge homeowners have retained a window of hope in their campaign to hold neighboring Advocate Lutheran General Hospital liable for flooding. After the Cook County Circuit Court dismissed two counts of the homeowners’ class-action complaint, the First District Appellate Court reversed one of those dismissals in an unpublished order issued in December. The issue arose from a Sept. 13, 2008, storm and a subsequent Feb. 12, 2009, class action complaint.
In a pair of decisions, a state appeals panel again upheld the ability of Cook County and other home rule units of local government in Illinois to tax slot and video gaming machines. Both cases, docketed in court records as Case No. 13-L-050995 and Case No. 14-CH-7357, named Lemont-based Accel Entertainment among the plaintiffs, and both were decided by the same panel of three judges.
The Chicago Housing Authority should not be allowed to continue with its lawsuit to recover money from an architecture and design firm the CHA blames for causing it to spend an additional $4.3 million to retrofit newly renovated apartments to comply with federal disability access laws, a state appeals panel has ruled. On Dec. 11, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court upheld the decision of Cook County Circuit Judge Ronald Bartkowicz.
An appellate court has upheld a lower court’s ruling against the granddaughter of business luminary Harold C. Price, rejecting the woman's suit against her attorney and the Katten Muchin Rosenman law firm for legal malpractice based on claims his legal advice caused her to lose $14 million of an $18 million inheritance.
A state appellate panel has decided a wrongful death lawsuit brought against a waste collection company over the death of a man whose car collided with a garbage truck near Belvidere should stay in Boone County, despite the desire of the man’s family to try the case in Cook County.
The operators of Rivers Casino were dealt a blow last week when a state appellate court overturned a Cook County judge’s decision vacating Cook County’s video gaming tax. Midwest Gaming and Entertainment, which operates the Des Plaines casino, had sought relief from Cook County’s tax on video gambling machines, prevailing upon Cook County Circuit Court Judge Robert Lopez Cepero to find the county tax ordinance was preempted by the state’s Riverboat Gambling Act.
A state appellate panel has ruled the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion, and not that of the state’s highest court, should hold sway in a case in which a group of Chicago area homeowners have argued a decision by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to release flood waters, resulting in backed-up sewers, flooded creeks and extensive damages to surrounding homes, constitutes an illegal taking of their property under the Illinois Constitution.
An appeals panel has upheld an $8 million judgment awarded to the family of a suburban woman killed by a truck along the side of Interstate 94 in 2010, rejecting a trucking company's claims it didn't get a fair trial and the trial judge made a number of mistakes. The First District Appellate Court in Chicago on Aug. 14 affirmed the jury verdict awarded to the family of Stacey L. McHale.
The Chicago Park District must post signs in its parks explaining that only children under the age of 12 can use its equipment, a state appeals panel held last week in overturning the dismissal of a lawsuit stemming from a 13-year-old's injury on a slide.
