On April 9, 2014, the Seventh Circuit issued its opinion in Johnson v. Pushpin Holdings, LLC, No. 14-8006 (7th Cir. April 9, 2014). In Pushpin, the Seventh Circuit held that before a class is certified, a statement by the named plaintiff in the complaint does not limit the amount of potential damages that the class would be able to recover and, therefore, that named plaintiff could not thereby avoid removal under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”) by indicating that the complaint sought less than $5 million. In so ruling, the Seventh Circuit followed the binding precedent set by ...
The qualifications for a clerkship with a federal circuit judge are steep: high class ranking from a top law school, significant law review experience, recommendations from well-respected faculty, etc. Now another qualification may be added to that list: the ability to don and doff poultry sanitary gear in less than two minutes.
Such was the “experiment” performed by court staff at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to help decide a case styled Mitchell v. JCG Industries, Inc. The majority opinion in that case, written by Judge Posner and joined by Judge ...
On March 18, 2014, District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr. issued a Memorandum and Order dismissing the former Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Patriot Coal Corporation in a stock drop securities class action filed in the Eastern District of Missouri. Glenn E. Davis, Partner in HeplerBroom LLC’s St. Louis office assisted Sidley Austin LLP with the decisive analysis and briefing under the Securities Exchange Act and Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (“PSLRA”).
The Court found that the defendants lacked scienter to sustain federal securities ...
Stratus Building Solutions faced a business challenge on a bet the company scale. Despite winning many franchise awards, five franchisees charged that its entire system imposed a fraud on franchisees. The plaintiffs sued 179 defendants, including the system franchisor, master (regional) franchisors, and over 70 individuals associated with the franchise system of violating §§ 1962(c) & (d) of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”). They claim the Defendants collectively operate the Stratus franchise system through a massive, but vaguely ...
In Parko, et al. v. Shell Oil Co. et al., Nos. 13-8023 & 8024 (7th Cir. Jan. 17, 2014), Judge Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently reversed an order from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois granting class certification to a group of plaintiffs who alleged that an industrial site leaked benzene and other contaminants into the groundwater under the proposed class members’ properties, thereby damaging the value of these properties. Judge Posner distinguished the case from an opinion he authored in Mejdrech v ...
Judge John Tharp of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of Ameren Illinois in the case of Peter Stanley v. Ameren Illinois Company, et al., 1:12-cv-06073, involving a 76-year-old engineer who died of mesothelioma.
Peter Stanley spent his career as a boiler engineer for Babcock & Wilcox. From 1961 to 1967, he worked as a field start-up engineer, commissioning new boilers at numerous industrial sites throughout the Midwest. No defendant disputed that Peter Stanley was exposed to asbestos from thermal ...
Commercial adversaries are often tempted to transform breach of contract or warranty matters into negligence or negligent misrepresentation claims. Or fraud or other intentional tort claims. The lure of a more flexible claim before a jury can be hard to resist. Or the governing contract may have limitation of liability restrictions that make warranty and contractual claims unavailing. Nevertheless, The Eighth Circuit, interpreting Missouri law, strongly reaffirmed its view that tort claims cannot be substituted for matters of contractual risk allocation unless very narrow ...
In many commercial contexts an agreement includes a provision that selects a forum for future dispute resolution. Frequently, when conflict arises, a party may try to avoid the selected forum and file the first case on their home turf. The other party to the contract has to respond, but how?
Atlantic Marine Construction Co., a Virginia corporation, faced this issue in a construction contract dispute on a Texas project. Despite a standard forum-selection clause requiring litigation of disputes in state or federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, a subcontractor filed a preemptive suit ...
** By HeplerBroom Summer Associate Tiffany B. Wong
A. Direct Participant Liability Negligence Theory in Illinois
In Illinois, it is a bedrock principle of limited liability deeply ingrained in our economic and legal systems that a parent company is not liable for the acts of its subsidiary. Liability for negligence arises when one person breaches a duty of care owed to another. To establish a cause of action for negligence under the law, a plaintiff must establish four “elements”: (1) a duty of care, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) an injury caused by the breach, and (4) resulting ...
In Russell v. SNFA, 2013 IL 113909 (Ill. Apr. 18, 2013), the Illinois Supreme Court held that Illinois courts had jurisdiction over a French company despite the fact that the company had no offices, assets, property or employees in Illinois, no license to do business in Illinois, and did not specifically direct product sales in Illinois and was generally unaware its products were being distributed in the state.
On January 28, 2003, the sole occupant and pilot of a helicopter died after his helicopter crashed in Illinois. The decedent was a resident of Georgia who was living in Illinois ...
