April 1 closes out one of the longest months Americans have felt in a while, and with it comes another big financial difficulty facing the country: Rent. Landlords and lenders alike will find themselves in the unsettling reality that many of their renters and borrowers cannot stay current during this pandemic. Only a few months ago, studies found that the average American did not have the savings to endure a $1,000 emergency[1] —this during a period when the financial market indices were running on historic highs.
Now that the global economy is coming to a standstill and ...
Health experts have explained the need to “flatten the curve” through mandatory and voluntary social isolation. These painful yet necessary efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic have sparked a crisis in employment which is on course to surpass even the worst days of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Nationwide, millions have been laid off within a very short period. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment the week of March 16, a tremendous jump from the previous week’s 282,000 unemployment claims, and an overall record in U.S ...
On August 28, 2017, several new, employer-friendly provisions of the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA) took effect. Since then, the Missouri Supreme Court has issued a string of employment law opinions favorable to employers. Most recently, the Supreme Court struck a victory for employers defending retaliation claims asserted under the MHRA based upon requests for accommodation of disability. In the case Li Lin v. Ellis, SC 97641, 2020 WL 203145 (January 14, 2020)*, the Court held as an issue of first impression that an employee’s mere request for accommodation of a disability was ...
HeplerBroom’s Indiana office recently secured the dismissal of a long-standing lawsuit against its client, a product defendant in an asbestos case, on the basis that the Court lacked personal jurisdiction over the client. Notably, HeplerBroom was able to overcome the plaintiff’s various tactics for attempting to prove jurisdiction over the client, including an attempt to establish jurisdiction by piercing the corporate veil. This result was significant as it likely will bar any future attempts to name the client as a defendant in future asbestos litigation in Indiana ...
Under Illinois law, a healthcare provider facing allegations of malpractice knows that the standard by which his or her actions will be judged is what a reasonably careful healthcare provider would do under the same or similar circumstances based upon testimony provided by expert witnesses from the same area of practice. However, physicians and healthcare providers practicing in prisons, jails, and detention facilities will find that their decisions will be adjudicated under disparate standards that depend on a lay jury’s understanding of “objective ...
While overall trends show that more and more litigants are appearing in court without an attorney, in the medical malpractice context, defending a case against a pro se plaintiff is not as common. This is particularly true in courts where the amount in controversy must be in the tens of thousands before a court can even hear the case (e.g., in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, where the Law Division only hears civil suits for recovery of monetary damages in excess of $30,000). Nonetheless, we have all had one. You probably still have one now – and every pro se case brings its own ...
