One Cook County judge sits in the position to potentially award another Cook County judge millions of dollars in attorney fees for the other judge’s prior legal work on an 18-year-old case. Now, a group of business partners have asked the judge to reject a deal they say would allow attorneys suing them to sidestep a court order giving the partners access to the information they need to challenge the other judge’s windfall fee request.
Ryan Holz is speaking at ACI’s 31st National Forum on Consumer Finance, Class Actions and Government Enforcement conference in Chicago on July 23-24, 2019.
Carolyn Blessing, a Chicago Partner in Locke Lord’s IP Pharmaceutical Practice Group, is featured on the Joffrey Ballet’s Generation J website as Co-Chair of its Generation J Leadership Council.
Peter Carey, former law partner of Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick Sherlock, is being sued, accused of conspiring with his daughter and others to convert two years of legal work into a multi-million-dollar payday on the other side of a court fight among former real estate business partners that has stretched over nearly two decades.
Current Cook County Judge Patrick Sherlock stands poised to receive millions of dollars in fees for his work on a lawsuit nearly two decades ago. But the business partners who would pay those fees have asked a different Cook County judge to send the case and the fee request to a court outside Cook County, asserting all Cook County judges are too close to Sherlock to rule in the case.
Steve Whitmer, a member of Locke Lord’s Executive Committee and Chair of the Firm’s Chicago Litigation Department, has been selected as a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America (LCA).
Locke Lord’s Executive Committee has re-elected David Taylor (Houston) as Chair of the Firm and Jennifer Kenedy (Chicago), Bill Swanstrom (Houston) and Thomas Yoxall(Dallas) as Vice Chairs of its Executive Committee.
A Chicago federal judge has found a man can't sue a debt collector for including a line item in a debt collection notice claiming $0 in interests and fees.
Carolyn Blessing, a Partner in Locke Lord’s Chicago office, has been selected to receive the 2018 Leadership Award from the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law for her efforts in the advancement of women lawyers and support of women’s initiatives in law firms.
A man sentenced in an alleged fraudulent insurance billing scheme has sued the law firm that represented him, claiming his lawyers breached their standard of care.
Saying lawyers for the plaintiffs need to “drastically” reduce their $5.8 million fee request to make it "conceivable" to win his approval, a federal judge has rejected a $17.5 million settlement intended to end a class action lawsuit against debt collector Ocwen Loan Servicing over claims the company violated federal law when it called millions of debtors.
A court-appointed monitor of Cook County patronage is asking a federal judge to release her from her oversight duties, saying she believes the county’s government has undergone “profound transformation” in its employment practices and has a culture in place to keep politics from unduly influencing who gets county jobs and who doesn’t.
In what may be a defining decision for property preservation companies, a federal appeals panel has affirmed that property preservation companies are not acting as debt collectors when they leave a door hanger on a property they have serviced directing property owners who have defaulted on loans to contact a debt servicer or collector.
A state appeals court has refused to send to arbitration a dispute between insurer Zurich American and Personnel Staffing Group, in which Zurich claims PSG attempted to transfer more than $10 million to avoid paying an arbitration award.
With class action lawsuits piling up against employers and other businesses, the Illinois Supreme Court will soon step in to perhaps answer the question of who may sue under a state privacy law when an employer or merchant scans their fingerprints or other biometric identifiers to verify their identity for theme park admission, participation in various programs or to track hours worked, among other purposes.
A federal appeals panel has affirmed a judgment for debtors in a dispute with a debt collector over whether a debt was actually disputed, and the decision only continues a trend within Chicago's federal courts of moving the needle in such cases in favor of those owing disputed debts, said lawyers following such cases.
A recent decision by the California Supreme Court may pose new litigation risks for companies by changing the way the state defines employees or independent contractors, according to Richard Reibstein, an attorney with Locke Lord and co-head of the law firm’s independent contractor compliance practice.
Proposed bipartisan legislation currently before a state House committee that would grant legal recognition to blockchain smart contracts could propel the state ahead of the curve in business transactions that currently remain paper based, a Chicago-based attorney said during a recent interview.
