A Chicago appeals courts has affirmed a lower court ruling that shelved a class-action suit against Sears, Roebuck & Co., which alleged the retail giant sold credit card holders’ personal data to telemarketers, because card holders took no financial hit as a result of Sears’ action.
While declining to strike down the rules as unconstitutional, a federal judge will allow a group of pro-life activists to press ahead with a challenge asserting the city of Chicago has unfairly and improperly enforced its ordinance creating a “bubble zone” around abortion clinics in which activists are forbidden from interacting with women entering the clinics.
A Chicago appellate panel has affirmed a lower court finding that a suit lodged by scores of nursing homes, alleging Illinois state government excessively cut its Medicaid reimbursements to the nursing facilities, should be pursued in the Illinois Court of Claims rather than Cook County Circuit Court, because the state did not overstep its authority as to how it calculated the reductions.
The Illinois Supreme Court determined a Broadview term limits ordinance can stand, affirming an appellate decision which said the referendum's language concerning to whom the term limits would apply was not too "vague" to allow voters the chance to impose term limits on current and future village presidents in the suburban community.
A Rockford firefighter who officials determined contracted cardiomyopathy through his decades of service at the city’s fire department cannot also assert the disease should be considered a “catastrophic injury” entitling him and his wife to free health insurance under a “line-of-duty” pension, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled.
As the calendar flips to a new year, a host of new laws in Illinois and elsewhere will take effect, including a number of which employers should particularly be mindful.
CHICAGO – A class action lawsuit filed by a pair of former student athletes failed to make the grade as far as the 7th District Circuit Court is concerned.
Illinois citizens - and particularly those living in Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties - need to change their voting habits to reduce the problems that landed them near the top of American Tort Reform Association's most recent "Judicial Hellholes" list, an ATRA spokesman said.
Even as they noted their decision conflicts with the findings of their colleagues in Springfield, a panel of state appeals court justices in Chicago has ruled the Illinois law exempting nonprofit hospitals from property taxes is, indeed, constitutional.
Illinois home-based child care providers who refused to join a union designated by the state of Illinois to represent them, yet were compelled by the state for years to pay so-called “fair share” fees to that union to negotiate on their behalf, should not be able to force the union to pay them their money back, even after the state government and union agreed the law that forced them to pay the fair share fees should be considered unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.
A federal judge has cleared an East Chicago casino and a group of its customers to proceed with a lawsuit against a union, saying the union’s actions to escalate its long running labor feud with the casino by personally targeting the customers with a campaign of fliers, phone calls and visits to their homes and businesses, could be considered illegal harassment going beyond mere “handbilling” and other forms of permissible persuasive speech.
The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled plaintiffs need to suffer “physical impact” to pursue a lawsuit claiming negligent infliction of emotional distress, saying a lender had not breached the bounds of decency by sending contractors to change the locks and perform other maintenance on her home, which was in foreclosure, while she was still inside.
After two years off the official list, Cook County has again landed a top spot – albeit, in combination with two other downstate Illinois counties - on an annual list recognizing some of the most litigious locales in the U.S., the world’s most lawsuit-happy country. On Dec. 15, the American Tort Reform Association ranked Cook County, together with Madison and St. Clair counties, at No. 6 in its top U.S. “Judicial Hellholes.”
Cook County communities are weighing their options to respond to actions by the Cook County Board to impose ordinances, similar to those approved earlier this year in Chicago, to mandate paid sick leave and boost the minimum wage. The suburban communities believe the state constitution gives them the power to opt out, without challenging the county's constitutional authority to pass the ordinances in the first place.
An Illinois appeals panel has backed up a Cook County judge in declaring the law should be interpreted to allow a write-in candidate who is seeking to win a judicial seat against a former law clerk accused of impersonating a judge to receive votes cast for her on Election Day. However, neither the appellate justices nor a Cook County judge have yet declared the write-in candidate the winner of the Nov. 8 election, saying the answer to that question should come from the Illinois Supreme Court.
A panel of the Illinois Human Rights Commission has fined the owner of a downstate bed-and-breakfast inn that refused to host a same-sex civil union ceremony. And the innkeeper's attorney has pledged to appeal the case as far as they can.
Cook County has enacted ordinances, virtually identical to similar ordinances enacted earlier by the city of Chicago, requiring employers throughout the county provide paid sick leave and a higher minimum wage to employees. But did the county have the authority to do it? Opinions from the county's own State's Attorney's office said likely not.
The U.S. wing of a British high-end retail clothier has failed in a gambit to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit alleging it broke federal law by printing too many credit card digits on its customers’ receipts – and has been stuck with a bill for $58,000 for its opponents’ legal costs, as the federal judge sent the case back to Cook County court for further proceedings.
The Chicago Transit Authority will need to pay a group of its part-time bus drivers more than $7 million after a state appellate panel upheld an arbitrator’s determination the bus drivers’ union was correct in believing the CTA had overworked the drivers, in violation of their collective bargaining agreement.
The Illinois Supreme Court has put the freeze on certain slip-and-fall suits, by affirming an appellate ruling that the Illinois Snow and Ice Removal Act immunizes homeowners against suits arising from weather-caused slippery sidewalks, but not from ice buildup caused by negligent drainage.
