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Stories by Jonathan Bilyk on Cook County Record

COOK COUNTY RECORD

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Jonathan Bilyk News


SCOTUS: Airline ramp workers exempt from arbitration mandates, more class actions vs transportation employers inbound?

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The U.S. Supreme Court says Southwest Airlines ramp workers are involved in interstate commerce, and should be given exemption under federal law from mandatory arbitration clauses in their employment contracts

Class action: Instant Pot makers didn't tell consumers cooker lids can open while under pressure, burn users

By Jonathan Bilyk |
A nationwide class action is seeking to compel the makers of the Instant Pot line of electric cookers to pay for allegedly failing to tell consumers about an alleged defect in the product that could cause users to get severely burned

Lawsuit: Cook County property tax appeal review board member illegally hired her cousin, refuses to fire him

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The Cook County Board of Ethics says Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Tammy Wendt hired her first cousin to a $150K per year job in violation of the county's hiring rules, and has refused to comply with orders to remove him

Class action: Advocate Aurora, debt collector tried to collect charged off debts

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The complaint asserts the large hospital and health care network and debt collector LJ Ross violated federal debt collection law and state consumer fraud law

Google Photos lawsuit administrators begin accepting claims for cut of $100M biometrics privacy class action settlement

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Illinois residents have a chance to claim up to $400 each from a $100 million settlement to be paid by Google to end a class action settlement over face scans in its Google Photos app. Google was sued under Illinois' strict biometrics privacy law

Judge: Illinois prejudgment lawsuit interest law unconstitutional

By Jonathan Bilyk |
A Cook County judge said the law supported by Democratic state lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker illegally interferes with jury rights and authority, while improperly penalizing defendants, and gifting personal injury plaintiffs with special benefits not given to anyone else in Illinois

Class action: CVS biometric passport photo system ran afoul of IL biometrics privacy law

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The lawsuit claims CVS should pay big, because it didn't provide enough notice to customers of biometric face scans before taking the photos they requested for passports, using a biometric face scanning system designed to comply with federal passport photo rules

Lawsuit: Illinois illegally counts mail-in votes for federal office up to 2 weeks after Election Day

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Three Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Michael Bost, have sued the state of Illinois, arguing federal law sets the date of Election Day, and Illinois' vote-by-mail illegally extends Election Day by 14 days

Class action lawsuit accuses Wintrust Bank of racially discriminatory home loans

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The complaint asserts Wintrust allegedly declines Black borrowers at higher rates than whites, and approves Black home buyers at terms more onerous than those offered to white borrowers

Judge: Ice cream need only taste like vanilla, not have actual vanilla beans, to defeat deceptive marketing class action

By Jonathan Bilyk |
A federal judge dismissed a class action against Prairie Farms, claiming the dairy misled consumers by selling "Premium Vanilla Ice Cream" with vanillin flavoring, rather than real vanilla

IL appeals courts, again: No insurance coverage for Covid shutdowns, mitigations, even if ordered by government

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Two different Illinois state appellate court panels rejected attempts by the owners of hotels and restaurants, who were hammered by the government response to the Covid pandemic, to force Zurich American Insurance to cover their losses

Appeals court: Pritzker 2020 biz closure orders, alone, not enough to allow biz owners to sue for illegal takings

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected yet another challenge to Pritzker's long-running use of emergency executive powers amid the Covid pandemic, saying plaintiffs didn't provide enough to back their sprawling claims that Pritzker trampled their rights

Chase Bank exec withdraws lawsuit vs ex-colleague

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff

'Legal 3-and-out with a punt:' Judge ends FoxFire suit vs Pritzker restaurant orders; Lawyer worries about precedent

By Jonathan Bilyk |
An attorney for Geneva restaurant FoxFire says the case law set in challenges vs Gov. JB Pritzker's use of emergency power sets bad precedent for future, allowing governors to get away with issuing constitutionally 'questionable' orders

Chicago Public Schools: IL health laws, due process rights don't apply to student athlete Covid test rules

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Chicago Public Schools says a court should reject an attempt by a high school soccer player to block enforcement of its Covid testing rules for unvaccinated student athletes, which the student claims violate her rights under Illinois law

'Astronomical damages:' IL high court ponders how many fingerprints should be worth up to $5K each under IL biometrics law

By Jonathan Bilyk |
With potentially billions of dollars on the line, justices on the state high court must answer the question of how many repeated scans of fingerprints and other biometric data should cost Illinois employers $1,000-$5,000 each under the state's stringent Biometric Information Privacy Act

Class action seeks big payout from SnapChat app parent over Lenses facial recognition tech

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Snap Inc. could be on the hook for potentially more than $2 billion in damages under the lawsuit, which says SnapChat Lenses improperly scans users' faces without consent or notice under Illinois' biometrics privacy law

Walgreens says insurers wrongly reneged on duties to cover legal costs, $1B+ damages in opioid lawsuits

By Jonathan Bilyk |
Walgreens, the nation's second largest retail pharmacist, has sued more than two dozen insurance companies, asking a court to order them to cover Walgreens' costs related to 2,500 lawsuits pending against the retailer over the opioid crisis

Flossmoor School District: Schools don't need to respect IL health law when ordering kids exposed to Covid to stay home

By Jonathan Bilyk |
A lawsuit asserted Flossmoor District 161 violated a family's due process rights when it ordered a fourth grader to stay home because she had been exposed to Covid

Lawsuit says CPS mandatory Covid testing for unvaccinated student athletes discriminatory, illegal

By Jonathan Bilyk |
The lawsuit was filed by the mother of a women's soccer team member at Whitney Young High School, who has been barred from playing since late April over objections to CPS' rule requiring only unvaccinated athletes to test exclusively through CPS' Covid testing vendor