The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision, granting a win to a Colorado baker accused of violating the civil rights of a gay couple by refusing to bake a custom-designed cake for their wedding, could signal that, while the courts are upholding the civil rights of same-sex couples, it does not create a legal "open season" on others - including business owners - whose religious beliefs may not allow them to walk in step with society's rapidly changing values, say two attorneys who specialize in litigating religious freedom cases.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is back to its full intended complement of judges after the confirmation of Michael Scudder and Amy St. Eve, two Chicago judges who joined the bench in May.
The justices of the Illinois Supreme Court agreed court clerks lack the legal authority to tack on supposedly mandatory fines to judgments entered against defendants, when no judge ever ordered the defendants to pay the fines. However, the court divided sharply over what recourse defendants can use to stop clerks from collecting the fines, nonetheless.
The city of Harvey has won a temporary reprieve, of sorts, after a Cook County judge signed off on an agreement, which, while still requiring the cash-strapped city to pay large chunks to pension funds for retired police and firefighters, still allows the city government to apparently access most of its share of Illinois state sales tax revenue.
CHICAGO — The First District Appellate Court of Illinois upheld a decision that a police officer's injury could not be proven as a line-of-duty disability, meaning the officer cannot receive a line-of-duty disability pension.
The Illinois Supreme Court has disbarred two lawyers, and suspended 13 others, including a Cook County judge convicted of bank fraud and another attorney who pleaded guilty to child sex assault, in its latest round of attorney disciplinary actions, announced in late May.
A recent ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court that found that companies should not be held liable for damages related to second-hand asbestos exposure is “common sense” and could affect similar cases in other states, according to Travis Akin, the executive director of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch.
A Cook County judge could soon weigh in on a legal fight between Illinois’ largest association of lawyers and a state regulatory agency, over the question of whether that state agency has the authority to effectively bar Illinois property tax lawyers from offering estimates of a property’s value when representing property owners before a state or county property tax appeal board.
With one judge saying he found “troubling” the potential harm to patients from decreased incentives for drug makers to develop new breakthrough medications, a federal appellate panel in Chicago hashed out some of the legal questions surrounding the appeal of jury’s verdict ordering GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3 million to the widow of a Chicago lawyer who committed suicide, and whose family has accused the pharmaceutical company of failing to warn that a generic version of its drug Paxil could raise a patient’s risk of suicide.
While the U.S. Supreme Court's Bristol Myers Squibb ruling has resulted in some big wins for businesses targeted by the plaintiffs' bar, new strategies and theories deployed by plaintiffs' lawyers may be blunting the further impact of that decision, despite high hopes from some it would largely thwart the ability of out-of-state plaintiffs to sue out-of-state defendants in a favorable court forum.
A state appeals court has shot down a Cook County judge's ruling, finding the judge was wrong to assert Chicago was the proper venue for a law firm headquartered in Ohio to sue a company based in Nevada, even though an email sent from Chicago was the only connection the defendant claimed it had in Illinois.
The Illinois Supreme Court has overruled lower court judges who had decided an Illinois state agency could wait until after a law is changed to use the change in the law to deny a public information request submitted before the law changed.
Saying the move could chill future defenses against overreaching government officials, attorneys who represented Backpage.com in litigation against the Cook County Sheriff’s Office’s attempts to shut down the classified ad site linked to sex trafficking, are asking a Chicago federal judge to reject Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s request they, too, be sanctioned for allegedly furthering Backpage’s alleged attempt to mislead the court.
Saying he believes Illinois law gives the city of Chicago the power to slap a 9 percent tax on people who pay to use Netflix, Spotify, Xbox Live and other streaming services, a Cook County judge has said plaintiffs need to pull the plug on a challenge to Chicago’s so-called “cloud tax.” Plaintiffs, however, said they intend to appeal, because the decision has more far-reaching implications for the ability of revenue-hungry Illinois governments to impose similar taxes throughout the state.
A man who claimed the state wrongly used a new state law to collect more than $400,000 in taxes on the estate of his mother, who died four days before the tax law took effect, can’t pursue his claims against the state, because he filed in the wrong court, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled.
An attempt by the pension fund for retired police officers to intercept and claim millions of dollars in revenue nominally belonging to the financially troubled city of Harvey is back on hold, at least for another week, after a Cook County judge granted a temporary restraining order requested by the fund supporting Harvey’s retired firefighters.
A state appeals panel said jurisdictional issues should have allowed General Electric to be dismissed from a personal injury complaint involving asbestos exposure.
Five current associate judges and 11 lawyers will take the bench in Cook County this summer, after the Cook County Circuit Court’s 252 elected circuit judges selected them to be appointed to serve as associate judges, filling vacancies in local courtrooms until at least next summer.
