Illinois Appellate Court Permits Insured to Prove Terms of Missing Policies with Specimen Coverage Forms for the Missing Policy Periods

In a significant ruling, the Illinois Appellate Court has allowed insured parties to use specimen coverage forms to prove missing insurance policies. This decision is beneficial in environmental contamination cases where key documents are often lost. The court’s opinion in *The Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Rogers Cartage Co.* shows how insured individuals can use secondary evidence to support their claims, potentially reshaping insurance litigation. Explore how this case may redefine standards for proving missing policy terms.

Get in that Chicken Suit! The Role of Facts Outside the Court Record in Appellate Review

In Mitchell v. JCG Industries, Inc., the Seventh Circuit, in a majority opinion by Judge Posner, rejected poultry workers’ claims that donning and doffing sanitary gear during lunch breaks constituted compensable work under the Fair Labor Standards Act. While acknowledging the trial court record did not resolve the dispute over how long the process took, the court conducted an in-chambers experiment with court staff to test the claim. Posner emphasized that the experiment was intended as background context to illustrate the de minimis nature of the task, not as adjudicative evidence, and underscored that common sense can inform judicial reasoning when no reasonable jury could find otherwise. The case highlights the tension between using background facts to “bring an opinion to life” and the traditional fact-finding role of the trial court.