The Illinois Supreme Court will decide whether the city of Chicago needs to garage its controversial tax on cars rented from businesses located outside the city, but within three miles of Chicago city limits. On Wednesday, Jan. 20, the state high court announced it would hear arguments in the lawsuit brought against City Hall by auto rental companies Hertz and Enterprise, who challenged the tax as an illegal extension of the city’s authority.
A trio of Dolton village trustees scored a victory in their dispute with the mayor and clerk over the legality of the town’s recall ordinance, as an appeals panel found the Illinois state constitution requires municipalities, like Dolton, must first secure the approval of voters at referendum for such recall powers.
An airline is under no obligation to make sure passengers and their baggage are transported on the same flight, an Illinois appeals court ruled, upholding a decision of a Cook County judge in dismissing a class action lawsuit on the question. Plaintiff Gina Spadoni had filed a single-count class-action lawsuit against United Airlines in Cook County Circuit Court in 2014, claiming the airline breached its contract with her when it placed her baggage on a different flight.
Chicago-based Zimmerman Law Offices may need to produce more records to substantiate its work if it wishes to recover a $157,000 payday it claims Sears must pay for work the firm performed to secure a $3.10 consumer fraud judgment on behalf of a “professional class action plaintiff” who had claimed the retailer charged him too much sales tax when he used federal vouchers to buy digital television converter boxes.
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.
The legal fight over the fate of the Park Grill restaurant in Chicago’s Millennium Park will continue in the courts in 2016 and perhaps beyond, as the city of Chicago and the restaurant’s operators each prepare for appeals and counter-appeals of a Cook County judge’s decisions in a case over an allegedly crooked restaurant deal that has already cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and court costs.
After taking a second look, a state appeals panel has again upheld as constitutional a Chicago ordinance prohibiting anyone, even protesters, from remaining overnight in Grant Park without special permission. On Dec. 22, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court ruled the city of Chicago did not march on the First Amendment rights of Occupy Chicago protesters when police arrested protesters who refused to leave.
The First District Illinois Appellate Court in Chicago slammed the door on a South Side homeowner’s claim, which blamed prior owners for not disclosing that the 99-year-old house’s title is burdened by landmark designation and demanded her title insurer compensate her for the oversight. The appellate court’s decision was rendered Dec. 14.
Saying to rule otherwise would illegally limit the ability of the Chicago Public Schools and other school districts to choose to hire or not hire teachers, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled 6-1 to reject the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s attempt to force the Chicago Board of Education to arbitrate grievances over how CPS designates probationary teachers it ultimately opts not to hire.
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.
Prominent Chicago bankruptcy lawyer Peter Francis Geraci and his wife have beaten back a Mexican mining magnate’s right-of-first-refusal suit, which tried to stop Geraci from buying a Magnificent Mile penthouse above the magnate’s floor. The First District Appellate Court of Illinois ruled in the Geraci couple’s favor Nov. 30, overturning a Cook County Circuit Court decision that had gone against them.
Two title insurance companies did not participate in an illegal kickback scheme by splitting fees with Chicago area real estate lawyers in return for those attorneys referring clients to them, a divided state appeals panel has ruled, finding lawyers are allowed to be paid fees by the title companies – even fees that may appear large, relative to the work they actually performed – if they perform any work related to clearing a title, at all.
Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios, who also serves as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, has lost another round in court in his attempt to avoid turning over documents demanded by the county’s Inspector General as part of the IG’s investigation of allegations Berrios’ office improperly granted an assessor’s office employee a special property tax exemption.
The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to take up the question of whether U.S. Supreme Court precedent or that of the state’s highest court should hold serve when deciding whether a decision by the Greater Chicago Water Reclamation District to release flood waters and damage private homes in the process constitutes an illegal taking of property. It was one of six cases the state high court agreed to take on appeal.
A Chicago law firm which allegedly initially declined to bring a whistleblower suit against doctors and MRI companies over purportedly illegal leasing agreements, but then later won hundreds of thousands of dollars for a different client in a nearly identical case months later, should not be held liable for the first client’s failure to bring a similar case or collect damages, a state appeals panel has ruled.
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.
A state appeals panel kept the door shut on a legal malpractice action brought against the firm of Cascino Vaughan by a family whose legal action over asbestos exposure was tossed, saying a circuit court was correct in finding that, no matter how plaintiffs juggled the calendar, they still brought their lawsuit too late. .
A software executive has said a group of investment bankers led him to put his money into a scheme frowned upon by federal tax collectors, but a state appellate court has found, like a trial court before them, that he ran out of time to sue his erstwhile financial advisers at Deutsche Bank and BDO.
A state appeals panel has found a businessman involved in a dispute with business partners over the fate of an Evanston debt collection company didn’t move fast enough to bring a legal malpractice claim against Chicago law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman for allegedly helping those partners freeze him out of the company’s management and then working to torpedo the venture by forming a new company specifically to compete against the first venture.
