Thirty-six billion dollars. That's the value of assets in all asbestos-related bankruptcy trusts, according to the United States Government Accountability Office (and that's 2011 numbers!).[1] With so much money sitting idly by, as the old adage goes, the money is talking. When money talks, the United States Congress listens (that should be another adage).
"Asbestos litigation has been the longest-running mass tort litigation in U.S. history and arose out of millions of Americans' lengthy and widespread occupational exposure to asbestos[.]"[2] As asbestos litigation enters ...
St. Louis area employers with employees in Illinois should be aware that, on January 1, 2015, Illinois joined the ranks of a dozen or so other states around the country that “ban the box.”
The Box
The “box” is that section of many standard employment application forms that asks applicants whether they previously have been convicted of a crime. In Illinois, employers are now prohibited from considering or inquiring about an applicant’s criminal record until the applicant has been determined qualified for the position and notified of an impending interview, or, if the ...
As defense counsel in the trucking industry have seen in recent years, broker liability is a burgeoning area in which plaintiff’s attorneys are beginning to explore as a means to reach the elusive “deep pockets” of many of our broker clients. Much of the lure of broker liability began with the $23.8 million judgment against a freight broker that was upheld by an Illinois appellate court in Sperl v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., 946 N.E.2d 463 (Ill. App. Ct. 2011). At the most surface level of the issue, the court’s decision in Sperl rested primarily upon the significant ...
Although it might seem like a clear-cut argument—“my client cannot be bound to a contractual provision when it was not a party to the contract”—courts have routinely rejected it. In doing so, these courts have often ordered that a defendant is then bound to a forum selection clause found in a co-defendant’s agreement with the plaintiff. In order to reach this result, however, the court must conclude that the nonsignatory defendant is sufficiently “closely related” to the dispute in the underlying action, such that it was foreseeable that the nonsignatory defendant ...
