Saying the legal action asks a state court to substitute its own judgment for federal law and environmental rules, Sterigenics, the owner of a facility in suburban Willowbrook targeted by trial lawyers, politicians and a group of area residents for its use of ethylene oxide, has asked a federal judge to take jurisdiction over a lawsuit brought against them by state prosecutors.
As federal environmental regulators reassess their controversial measurements of emissions from the Sterigenics plant in Willowbrook, a group of lawyers representing Willowbrook residents are continuing unfazed in their lawsuits against the company, based largely on findings in a federal report that relied heavily on the allegedly faulty data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Saying plaintiffs are asking the courts to essentially rewrite federal environmental laws and regulatory rules based on a single report issued by a federal agency relying on faulty data, medical device sterilizer Sterigenics has asked a federal judge to corral a stampede of lawsuits that have hit the courts in recent weeks amid a blizzard of media reports asserting the company’s use of a key sterilizing agent at its facility in suburban Willowbrook could cause cancer.
The Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board is alleging a DuPage County judge retaliated against two courthouse employees for accusing him of sexual harassment and repeatedly lied to police and the board, in a separate matter, about firing a bullet through his apartment wall into an adjacent unit.
A federal judge has granted American Airlines’ request to reject a class action complaint accusing it of violating contracts by canceling reservations for passengers who don’t check in an hour before their scheduled departure.
A federal judge has sided with objectors who want to undo a class action settlement involving a five-year-old Neiman Marcus data breach, saying the leading plaintiffs do not adequately represent the entire group.
While noting the plaintiffs had presented statements which could indicate price-fixing activity, a federal appeals panel has refused to melt down a lower court’s decision to slice up a potentially massive class action lawsuit accusing U.S. steelmakers of conspiring to jack up prices for raw steel.
A Chicago federal appeals court is giving a lawsuit watchdog group a chance to show whether attorneys for three objectors to a $9 million class action settlement allegedly tried to squeeze extra money for themselves from the settlement by lodging objections on behalf of their clients.
About a month after a Cook County judge convicted by a jury of bank fraud filed papers to seek reelection, state judicial disciplinary officials have launched the process to remove her from the bench and prevent her from continuing to collect her more than $190,000 a year salary.
A state appeals panel said jurisdictional issues should have allowed General Electric to be dismissed from a personal injury complaint involving asbestos exposure.
Former College of DuPage President Robert L. Breuder can proceed with his wrongful termination and defamation complaint, after a federal appeals court said potentially questionable language within his contract – including a provision requiring a supermajority among the college’s trustees to fire him - did not mean the college’s board was justified in firing him without giving him a hearing to dispute accusations of mismanagement leveled against him.
A federal judge has refused to let the former CEO of a South American Aon subsidiary end a $20 million federal lawsuit he faces in Chicago, in which he is accused of funneling company funds.
A federal judge has placed on hold the city of Chicago’s lawsuit accusing the makers of prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Percocet – so-called “opioids” – of falsely marketing their drugs to doctors. defrauding City Hall and other employee health plan administrators, while giving time for a panel of federal judges to decide if the action should be consolidated with other similar lawsuits, brought by cities and others, now pending in other jurisdictions.
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 group of Honda car owners suing the automaker for building cars containing wires coated with a soy-based compound rodents find tasty, will need to press their class action claims in California, a Chicago federal judge has ruled.
Former Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess has pleaded poverty in Chicago federal court as he defends a malicious prosecution suit from Alstory Simon, a man cleared of murder charges who blames Protess for leading a conspiracy, involving private investigators and Northwestern journalism students, to frame him for the murder of two men.
A federal judge has taken to task a Chicago law firm for attempting to intervene in an endangered junk fax class action lawsuit, saying a motion the lawyers filed amounted to little more than an attempt to play “gotcha” games with the defendants in the case and the law.
A federal judge has shot down an attempt by a “professional class action plaintiff” chiropractic firm and their lawyers to pursue a junk fax class action worth potentially $200 million, saying the lack of honesty, at best, or sloppiness, at best, by the plaintiffs and their lawyers doomed their attempt to lead the lawsuit against a marketing company the judge noted had sent tens of thousands of junk fax ads.
The Illinois First District Appellate Court has upheld a lower court's decision that a plaintiff couldn’t sue the lawyers who handled his father’s estate because he didn’t file the malpractice suit in time, ruling Illinois' repose statute was constitutionally sound in placing "reasonable" time limits on the ability of heirs to sue over the handling of estates.
The city of Chicago will not be able to collect $29 million it believed it was owed by Expedia and other online travel booking sites, after a state appeals court ruled the city’s hotel taxes can’t be applied to the fees charged by the booking services.
