Gary Scott Feinerman

This case involved a dispute between G & G Peppers, a supplier of jalapeño peppers, and Ebro Foods, a buyer that failed to pay for the goods and later entered bankruptcy. G & G sought to enforce a USDA reparations order for payment and to claim priority through a PACA statutory trust, along with attorney fees. The court affirmed the bankruptcy court's ruling that G & G did not preserve its PACA trust rights due to failure to meet the statute's strict notice requirements, resulting in no priority over other creditors. However, it reversed the denial of attorney fees, holding that G & G was a prevailing party under the relevant PACA enforcement provision and remanding for calculation of a reasonable fee award.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved Tile Unlimited suing Blanke Corp., Virginia Tile Corp., and employee David Deutsch in Illinois state court over claims including violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, fraud, breach of warranty, and unjust enrichment arising from the sale of a tile underlayment product. After an initial suit against the corporate defendants was removed to federal court on diversity grounds and voluntarily dismissed, the plaintiff refiled the action adding Deutsch (an Illinois citizen like the plaintiff) to defeat diversity jurisdiction. The defendants removed again, and the court denied the motion to remand, ruling that Deutsch was fraudulently joined because Tile Unlimited was not a consumer under the ICFA and could not satisfy the consumer nexus test, creating no reasonable possibility of prevailing against him. Diversity jurisdiction therefore existed over the remaining parties, and the claim against Deutsch was dismissed.

procedurebusiness & regulatory

Plaintiff Zachary Boyd sued U.S. Bank and related entities in a putative class action, alleging violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, and Illinois common law stemming from the defendants' handling of his home mortgage loans, failure to evaluate him for a HAMP loan modification, and unauthorized entry and padlocking of his home without foreclosure proceedings. The defendants moved to dismiss several counts of the amended complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). The court granted the motion in part, dismissing the portion of Count I based on the Illinois Homeowner Protection Act and dismissing Count III (breach of servicer participation agreements) in full, while denying the motion as to the remaining claims and declining to dismiss U.S. Bank as a defendant. The court reasoned that some claims failed to state a viable cause of action while others, including those alleging agency relationships and violations of ECOA and ICFA, were adequately pleaded at the pleading stage and could not be resolved without considering matters outside the pleadings.

business & regulatoryproperty

HALO sued the Goldmans for breach of warranty under a stock purchase agreement and for fraudulent inducement after acquiring their promotional products companies, alleging that certain representations about material contracts and sales projections were false. The court granted HALO partial summary judgment on two breach claims, finding that the Goldmans failed to disclose a written contract with Express Scripts as required by Section 3.12 and made inaccurate representations about the Track Group account under Section 3.27, but denied summary judgment on the remaining breach and all fraud claims; it denied the Goldmans' cross-motion in full. Applying Missouri contract and fraud law, the court held that contractual disclosure obligations were not excused by inadvertence or the buyer's partial knowledge, while genuine disputes over the sellers' knowledge and intent required trial.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case concerned a challenge by the Baer family to Illinois procedures for obtaining a religious exemption from providing a social security number on a driver's license application, which they alleged violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The court dismissed the case without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The core reasoning was that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing because they had not submitted exemption applications or provided competent evidence that doing so would be futile, and thus had not established an injury-in-fact. The opinion noted that the statute and regulation allow for exemptions based on personal religious convictions and that isolated prior denials did not demonstrate futility.

religious libertycivil rightsprocedure

This case involves eight current or former employees of Waukegan Public School District 60 who brought individual claims of race, sex, and age discrimination and retaliation under Title VII and the ADEA, along with breach of contract claims and, in two instances, malicious prosecution. The district moved to sever the case or hold separate trials and later to dismiss portions of the amended complaint, arguing that the plaintiffs' 'school-wide policy' allegations amounted to unexhausted pattern-or-practice claims outside the scope of their EEOC charges and that certain claims were time-barred. The court granted the plaintiffs leave to file a second amended complaint, dismissed some individual discrimination claims and the malicious prosecution claims as untimely based on the complaint's allegations, struck the request for punitive damages, and denied dismissal of the school-wide policy allegations while finding that they did not state separate pattern-or-practice claims. The reasoning centered on the exhaustion doctrine requiring claims to be within the scope of EEOC charges, the statute of limitations for malicious prosecution being evident from the pleadings, and the plaintiffs' agreement to dismiss certain claims like England's retaliation count.

civil rightslabor & employmentprocedure