Recently, in the matter of Tate v. Pecora Corp., Case No. 16-L-1399, the Madison County Circuit Court has dismissed a Plaintiff’s asbestos complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction pursuant to M.M. ex rel. Meyers v. GlaxoSmithKline LLC, 61 N.E. 3d 1026 (Ill. App. 2016). In GlaxoSmithKline, the Chicago-based Illinois First Appellate District ruled that plaintiffs had made a prima facie showing that their claims arose directly from, or were related to, GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) “purposeful activities” in Illinois, that GSK failed to rebut this prima facie showing, and ...
Judicial estoppel, also known as estoppel by inconsistent positions of law, precludes a party from taking a position in a case that is contrary to a position it has taken in earlier legal proceedings. Often, it is asserted as an affirmative defense in a personal injury lawsuit where the plaintiff failed to disclose the existence of the personal injury lawsuit as an asset in a prior bankruptcy. A plaintiff’s failure to disclose a personal injury cause of action in the bankruptcy proceeding deprives the trustee, and by proxy, the plaintiff’s creditors, of an asset that the creditors ...
Since 2005, Missouri attorneys have struggled with the interpretation and application of Missouri’s collateral source rule as it related to evidence of a plaintiff’s medical treatment bills. Generally speaking, the collateral source rule bars a defendant from introducing evidence that part of a plaintiff’s damages were paid for by a party other than the defendant; i.e., the plaintiff’s insurance company or some other form of public benefit. In Missouri, however, that rule had been applied to allow plaintiffs to present evidence of the total amount billed by a health care ...
Southern Illinois was recently in the national spotlight as the path of a total solar eclipse passed across the state. This rare occurrence brought hundreds of thousands of people to a thin path of the state to experience a natural phenomenon that, if not experienced correctly, could cause serious and permanent eye injuries. It also created opportunities for some to profit from this influx of celestially motivated travelers. This event provided a reminder of the potential uses of exculpatory language in contract; namely to limit or eliminate liability by an express assumption of ...
As of August 28, 2017, the Daubert standard will now govern the admissibility of expert witness testimony in certain cases in Missouri.[1] This is the result of House Bill 153, one of the first bills signed by Governor Eric Greitens, which effectively changes the language in Missouri Revised Statute Section 490.065 moving the standard for admissibility of expert testimony from a broad to more stringent standard requiring the Court to assess the basis of a proposed expert’s testimony before allowing the expert to testify at trial.
The new language in the statute makes it clear that in ...
Three recent successful Cook County defense verdicts in medical and dental malpractice cases show that the age old theory of teamwork and a united defense go a long way to winning cases. In all three trials, there were potential issues that could have split the defense camps, and efforts by opposing counsel in each case to divide and conquer the defendants. Despite those efforts, all defense counsel and clients alike worked together in the discovery phase, and through the course of lengthy trials, to achieve excellent defense outcomes.
In the first case, plaintiff claimed dental ...
As most business law practitioners are aware at this point, the Illinois Limited Liability Act has been amended by HB 4361 and the amendments were effective July 1, 2017. The amendments to the Limited Liability Company Act include numerous provisions regarding member managed companies. This article will address some of the concerns regarding the amendments as they relate to member managed Limited Liability Companies ("LLC").
The Amended Limited Liability Company Act ("ALLC") institutes major changes to the "statutory apparent authority" previously granted to member managed ...
While movies and television shows never include a scene about jury instructions, in which the attorneys make impassioned (but boring) arguments about comma placement and the definitions of commonly used words, trial attorneys recognize that jury instructions can make or break a case. In a recent employment discrimination trial in Springfield, Illinois, faulty jury instructions may have cost the plaintiff a verdict in her favor, damages in the amount of $100,000, and attorney’s fees for a case that has been litigated since 2011.
The case of Schnitker v. Springfield Urban League ...
Over the past few years, insurance companies have learned that handling liability claims in Missouri with coverage issues or policy-limit settlement demands can be an incredibly complex, and in some cases, dangerous endeavor. Much of that complexity stems from Missouri Revised Statute § 537.065, a statute which has been used as a powerful sword against carriers to collect rather large judgments in many cases.
On April 26, 2017, the Missouri General Assembly voted to repeal the current § 537.065 and replace it with a modified version. That replacement, House Bill 339, was signed into ...
The Seventh Circuit recently became the first circuit to hold that “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”). Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll. of Ind., 853 F.3d 339, 341 (7th Cir. 2017). “For many years, the courts of appeals of this country understood the prohibition against sex discrimination to exclude discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation.” Id. at 340. On April 4, 2017, the Seventh Circuit issued its groundbreaking decision,[1] departing from ...
