Saying she saw the legal action as little more than an attempt by a competitor to “force” Comcast to do business with them, a Chicago federal judge has pulled the plug on an antitrust legal fight over whether Comcast had used its position to improperly squelch competition in the market for local spot cable TV advertising.
Mayer Brown announced that Litigation & Dispute Resolution partner Lucia Nale and Government Relations & Public Law partner Joanna Horsnail were recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business among its 2018 “Notable Women Lawyers in Chicago.”
A Chicago federal judge has barred an Ohio health insurer from pursuing a class action against several pharmaceutical companies, which are already embroiled in massive litigation over their testosterone drugs, saying the thousands of potential claims would be too individualized to be served well by a class action and the insurer’s drug review practices were “unconventional.”
A federal appeals panel will allow a group of Chicago lawyers to keep their potential $15 million to $18 million payday for their work in securing a $76 million settlement from a cruise line and others accused of using nonprofit surveys to mask telemarketing calls, as judges said the size of the fee award doesn’t necessarily mean it is too large.
Mayer Brown announced the launch of a new practical guide, “Responding to a Mass Environmental Tort Litigation: A How-To,” which outlines the steps to manage environmental tort claims through a hypothetical environmental incident, beginning with the initial emergency response and related investigations and ending with the resolution of ensuing litigation.
Attorneys who bagged millions of dollars in fees from a $56-$75 million class action settlement in Chicago federal court against a cruise line and others accused of making illegal telemarketing calls, are alleging the defendants are trying now to sabotage the settlement by using bogus grounds to challenge 45,000 of 58,000 claims submitted.
Two companies specializing in software used by car dealerships must face an antitrust lawsuit alleging they improperly cornered the market for key industry data, and allegedly used their market share to close off competitors and jack up prices charged to vendors seeking the information they held.
Saying plaintiffs had effectively pleaded themselves out of court, a Chicago federal judge has slammed the door on an attempted class action lawsuit accusing operators of real estate website Zillow of breaking state consumer fraud and deceptive practices laws by using their “Zestimates” – an online home value estimation tool – as a “marketing gimmick” to drive business to Zillow’s preferred real estate agents and undercut home sellers’ ability to sell their home for what they believe it should be worth.
About three and a half years after a federal appeals panel led by former Judge Richard Posner smashed a $90 million settlement agreement the judges described as “scandalous,” a new set of lawyers have introduced a new, smaller deal once again intended to a nearly 12-year old class action lawsuit against window and door maker Pella over allegedly defective windows.
Emails and text messages sent and received by Chicago aldermen on their personal accounts and devices generally may not be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, a Cook County judge has ruled, partially thwarting an attempt by Chicago lawyer Ameer Ahmad to uncover what he believed were efforts by his neighbors to use connections to Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno to allegedly improperly block Ahmad from obtaining a permit for a home improvement project.
A federal judge will allow one of the country’s leading food service distributors and a group of others balking at the high price of chicken to continue to peck away at a federal antitrust action accusing the country’s largest poultry producers of fixing prices for their birds.
A Chicago federal appeals panel has scrapped an injunction won by a Wisconsin business against a Hoffman Estates-based provider of software to car dealers, with the court saying the injunction improperly distorts the marketplace.
North Chicago-based drugmaker AbbVie has asked a federal judge to toss out a $140 million verdict against it for allegedly mismarketing its testosterone replacement therapy drug, Androgel. And in the view of a Chicago attorney whose practice focuses on Supreme Court and appellate cases, as well as class actions, there is "no chance" that judgment will be allowed to stand.
A federal judge has signed off on a $354 million settlement deal to box up a years-long price fixing antitrust class action against some of the country’s largest makers of cardboard. And the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs in the action are set to take in nearly $100 million, or roughly 30 percent of the settlement fund.
A federal judge in Illinois has ruled that Bank of America and other banks were not in violation of consumer privacy acts and dismissed a class-action suit accusing the bank of improperly distributing the confidential information of homeowners who had borrowed mortgage loans.
A Chicago federal judge will allow a class action lawsuit to proceed against Shutterfly over its face tagging software, rejecting the online photo sharing company’s request to delete the action accusing it of violating an Illinois biometric privacy law.
A federal judge has tossed a cluster of class action lawsuits launched against online personal information listing providers, including Spokeo, Intelius. InstantCheckmate and BeenVerified, saying a web search advertising technique didn’t violate plaintiffs’ rights to control the use of their identity simply by using a person's name in an ad designed to steer people to their online people search products.
Saying the plaintiffs are asking the court to misread and misapply an Illinois state law, a Chicago federal judge has crashed a class action lawsuit against Zillow, which had accused the operators of the real estate website of essentially appraising property without a license, and then using their online home value estimate tool as a marketing ploy to drive business by hampering home sellers’ efforts to sell their home for what they believe it should be worth.
A Chicago federal judge has refused to force Viamedia, a New York-based seller of local cable TV advertising, to turn over documents Comcast believes would shed light on Viamedia’s efforts to use third-party litigation funding to fund its antitrust legal claims against Comcast, and to urge the federal government to also take action against the telecom giant.
Comparing their “zestimates” – proprietary online estimates of homes’ values – to editorials published by newspapers or ratings and reviews of various products and services published in print and online, the operators of real estate website Zillow have asked a Chicago federal judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by a north suburban lawyer and the owners of a Schaumburg-based home development company accusing Zillow of improperly hampering their efforts to sell their homes for what the plaintiffs believe they are worth.
