A Chicago federal judge has chopped a few counts from a huge putative class-action suit – based on laws of various states, including Illinois – accusing the maker of the prescription pain killer Opana of improperly keeping the price of its product high by paying off another pharmaceutical company to delay the release of a generic version of the drug.
Illinois' unique law to protect biometric privacy has already had an impact, as several of social media's giants have been hit with class action lawsuits alleging their photo sharing policies ran afoul of it. But in coming years, those actions could rope in a growing number of businesses of many sizes, as judges have begun to determine the statute, enacted in 2008, could have implications far beyond even social media or Illinois' state borders.
A judge has ruled a former CEO of Chicago coffee house chain Intelligentsia has grounds to continue his suit against his ex-business partners, who fired him and then allegedly refused to pay him more than $15 million in profit shares and his cut from the proceeds of the company’s sale.
The Illinois Supreme Court has strengthened the hand of hospitals in a ruling that took a physician’s suit off life support, because he failed to allege a north suburban hospital system inflicted “physical” harm upon him when it terminated his hospital privileges – which the court said is the necessary standard under state law for the hospital group to enjoy immunity from liability.
The grass is fake, but the legal dispute over who should own the rights to sell and install artificial turf in stadiums and practice facilities in Chicago – including at the Chicago Bears practice facility – is quite real.
Catholic Charities has asked a Cook County judge to overrule the Chicago Zoning Board’s permission for a medical marijuana dispensary to open near a Lakeview shelter for women and children it operates, saying the Zoning Board improperly overlooked the shelter’s unlicensed child care service when determining there were no day care centers or schools within 1,000 feet of the planned dispensary site.
A class-action lawsuit claiming SkyWest Airlines systemically underpays its flight attendants was transferred Dec. 9 from a federal court district in California to Chicago federal court, joining a virtually identical class action already pending against the airline in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
A turf war has spilled into federal court over the rights to a city of Chicago contract worth as much as $25 million to install new artificial turf in place of grass along a new taxiway at O’Hare International Airport. On Dec. 18, FieldTurf USA Inc., the maker and installer of artificial turf in stadiums and other settings throughout the U.S., filed suit in Chicago federal court against Chicago-based rival turf installer AvTurf.
A disability discrimination lawsuit brought by a legal secretary seeking at least $6 million in damages from law firm Winston & Strawn has hit a roadblock in federal court.
A federal judge has refused to rule Wells Fargo did not engage in lending practices blamed for allegedly exacerbating a plague of home mortgage foreclosures among minority homebuyers. But the judge still has tossed a lawsuit brought against the lender by Cook County over the bank’s alleged predatory lending practices.
