A Cook County judge has pulled the plug on much of a defamation lawsuit launched by a Chicago-based corporate law firm against prominent plaintiffs’ class action firm, Edelson P.C., in which the firm of Johnson & Bell accused Edelson of “spreading lies” as part of a “self-serving publicity tour” surrounding a class action case in which the two firms tussled.
Last month, Cook County Circuit Judge Jerry Esrig granted judgment to class action lawyer Jay Edelson and his firm, in the action brought by Johnson & Bell nearly two years earlier.
Johnson & Bell filed suit against Edelson and the Edelson firm in the spring of 2017 in Cook County Circuit Court, seeking more than $1 million in damages. The lawsuit alleged that, while Edelson and his firm “fashion themselves as a ‘leader in privacy and tech-related class actions’ … their ‘practice’ largely consists of nothing more than preying upon unsuspecting businesses, conjuring up nonexistent issues and then attempting to extort settlements that benefit no one but themselves through payments for their nuisance lawsuits.”
In recent years, the Edelson firm has stood at the forefront of a wave of class actions against tech companies and others, primarily over privacy concerns. This includes a mounting number of class actions under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Edelson, for instance, led a class action under the Illinois BIPA law, which secured a $500 million settlement from Facebook over claims related to the social media platform’s photo tagging system.
The Edelson firm, however, even more recently has also taken on actions in partnership with local governments, including representing the village of Melrose Park in a legal action seeking to prevent the closure of financially plagued Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park. Sticking with the action through federal court, bankruptcy court, and Cook County court, and enlisting the aid of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Edelson and Melrose Park ultimately settled for $1.5 million, with the Edelson firm slated to get as much as 20%. The hospital has remained closed.
Johnson & Bell’s lawsuit centered on a lawsuit Edelson filed against Johnson & Bell over its maintenance of client data. Johnson & Bell said Edelson disseminated “lies” about the firm’s allegedly inadequate data security to the Wall Street Journal and the professional publication American Lawyer.
Johnson & Bell at one point represented clients Jason Shore and Coinabul LLC in a 2014 class action brought by Yazan Hussein, who was represented by Edelson.
Johnson & Bell withdrew from the case. But after a default order was entered against Shore and Coinabul, they, in turn, filed a class action against Johnson & Bell over client data records. Edelson represented Shore & Coinabul.
However, Edelson later moved to voluntarily dismiss that class action. But before doing so, he moved to unseal the case files. At that point, Johnson & Bell asserted Edelson “set out on a publicity campaign in which he championed and restated the false and defamatory allegations” in the class action, including giving copies of the complaint to reporters and news outlets.
In addition to defamation and commercial disparagement, Johnson & Bell asserted Edelson should be made to pay a share of any damages it is ordered to pay to Shore and Coinabul in a separate malpractice lawsuit. That contribution claim remains in the lawsuit, according to Judge Esrig’s July 17 order.
During the two years Johnson & Bell’s litigation against Edelson has continued, the effects of the lawsuit spilled over into Jay Edelson’s divorce case. In that case, Edelson sought to disqualify his wife’s counsel because he feared her attorneys would feed his personal and business financial information to Johnson & Bell.
A judge ultimately ruled to seal Edelson’s divorce file.
Edelson also unsuccessfully sought to toss Johnson & Bell’s lawsuit as a so-called SLAPP suit, which Edelson claims Johnson & Bell was using to illegally silence its speech.
Edelson, however, ultimately prevailed.
In a December 2019 filing, Edelson said Johnson & Bell’s defamation allegations relied on “hearsay,” and collapsed when emails were revealed that Edelson said proved Edelson did not provide any documents to a Wall Street Journal reporter.
That, Edelson said, should end “J&B’s two-year ‘fishing trip.’”
A hearing for case management has been set for November, according to the judge’s order.