Abraham Lincoln Marovitz

This case arose after plaintiff Glen Dale Simkunas was arrested and charged with the 1982 rape and murder of Susan Marie Schaaf; the charges were later dismissed, and Simkunas sued two Hickory Hills police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged civil rights violations plus pendent state claims of false arrest and malicious prosecution. The court granted the officers' motion for summary judgment on the federal claims. It held that qualified immunity shielded the officers because Simkunas had not shown they violated any clearly established constitutional right of which a reasonable officer would have known. The court then dismissed the state-law counts for lack of an independent basis of federal jurisdiction.

civil rightscriminal lawproceduretorts & liability

In Ely v. Department of Justice, a federal prisoner sued the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and two individuals under the Privacy Act of 1974, alleging that an assistant U.S. attorney improperly disclosed FBI records about him to his court-appointed attorney in a separate civil rights lawsuit without his consent, and that the agencies failed to properly account for or safeguard the records. The court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss and for summary judgment, dismissing the entire action with prejudice. It held that the individual defendants could not be sued under the Act, that the disclosure fell within the routine use exception, and that the plaintiff had not alleged any adverse effect causally linked to the claimed accounting or safeguarding violations. The court reasoned that the only alleged harm stemmed from the disclosure itself, which did not violate the Act.

procedure

The case involved wage-earning plaintiffs suing the United States and the IRS Commissioner pro se, claiming that withholding and payment of income taxes on wages violated the Sixteenth Amendment and seeking injunctive and declaratory relief to exempt them from taxation. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Sovereign immunity barred the action because no statutory waiver was asserted. The Anti-Injunction Act prohibited suits to restrain tax assessment or collection absent narrow exceptions not met here, and the Declaratory Judgment Act expressly excluded controversies involving federal taxes.

taxesfederal powerprocedure

In this case, plaintiff Marcus Aguilera, a Mexican American, sued the Cook County Police and Corrections Merit Board under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging that its requirements for correctional officer positions—a high school education or equivalent and a mental ability examination—discriminated against Spanish Surnamed Americans on the basis of national origin by having a disparate impact. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. It found that Aguilera failed to present conclusive statistics showing a disparate impact from the education requirement on qualified applicants in the relevant labor market, and that even if such an impact existed, the defendant demonstrated the requirement's manifest relationship to the job due to the similarities between correctional officers and other law enforcement roles involving firearms and authority. For the mental ability test, statistics showed that SSA applicants had a higher pass rate than the overall applicant pool, so no prima facie case of discrimination was established.

civil rightslabor & employment

This case involves claims by Oakhill Cemetery and its officer/shareholder Roark against multiple banks, former officers, directors, and shareholders alleging violations of federal securities laws (including Rule 10b-5 and Section 17(a)) and related state law claims arising from stock purchases, loans, promissory notes, and asset transfers that allegedly involved misrepresentations, unauthorized transactions, and mismanagement of corporate funds. The district court addressed motions to dismiss by several defendants and a motion for summary judgment, focusing on federal claims in Counts III through XV. The court dismissed the federal securities claims, holding that Oakhill lacked standing as a purchaser or seller in certain transactions under Blue Chip Stamps, that internal corporate actions like stock repurchases funded by loans did not constitute federal securities fraud but instead involved state-law corporate governance issues under Santa Fe Industries v. Green, and that jurisdictional limits under 12 U.S.C. § 94 precluded pendent jurisdiction over national banks. Some state-law claims and claims by Roark in his individual capacity were not fully resolved in the excerpted portion.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case concerns a Wisconsin grain company that purchased a storage bin manufactured by an Illinois defendant; after the bin's roof collapsed, the plaintiff sought damages for repair costs, lost profits, and the purchase price under theories of strict tort liability, negligence, and breach of express and implied warranties, along with class allegations. The court addressed a motion to dismiss in this diversity action by first determining that Illinois substantive law applies to the tort claims under choice-of-law principles. It held that Illinois does not permit recovery in tort for purely economic loss and therefore dismissed the strict liability and negligence counts. On the warranty claims, the court examined privity requirements, the effect of any disclaimers, and pleading standards before denying dismissal in part and granting it in part.

torts & liabilityprocedurebusiness & regulatory

This case involved nonprofit organizations challenging ordinances from several Chicago-area municipalities that required prior approval for door-to-door solicitation and limited such activities to certain weekday daytime hours. The plaintiffs argued these rules violated their First Amendment rights by not setting a specific timeframe for approving applications and by restricting evening solicitations. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, holding the ordinances unconstitutional. The reasoning was that such regulations are presumptively invalid when they affect free speech, and the municipalities failed to show the restrictions were narrowly tailored to legitimate interests like preventing crime or reducing annoyance, especially since more residents are home in the evenings and alternative measures could address concerns.

free speechcivil rights

In Abraham v. Field Enterprises, plaintiff Zenophan Abraham, a Black male, sued his former employer Field Enterprises and its successor under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging racial discrimination in employment conditions including failure to promote, inadequate training, unfair evaluations, and termination. The defendant moved for partial summary judgment on all claims except termination, which the court treated as a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court granted the motion and dismissed the additional claims, holding that Title VII requires claims in a lawsuit to be reasonably related to the underlying EEOC charge, which here addressed only the termination and not the other alleged discriminatory acts. The court reasoned that the administrative investigation and charge focused solely on termination, so extending jurisdiction to unrelated claims would undermine the statute's emphasis on administrative conciliation.

civil rightslabor & employmentprocedure

This case involves a state prisoner's petition for federal habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his attempted murder conviction on multiple grounds, including prosecutorial errors during trial, improper jury instructions, insufficient evidence, and ineffective assistance of counsel. The court addressed respondent's motion to dismiss the entire petition due to the presence of an unexhausted claim regarding ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel, which could be raised in state post-conviction proceedings. The court adopted the approach of most circuits that mixed petitions with exhausted and unexhausted claims require dismissal of the unexhausted claim along with any related exhausted claims to respect federal-state comity, but allows unrelated exhausted claims to proceed. Specifically, it dismissed the ineffective assistance claim and the related insufficiency of evidence claim while denying dismissal of the other four exhausted claims, ordering the respondent to answer those remaining claims.

criminal lawprocedurefederal power

The case Terrazas v. Muskie concerned whether plaintiff Laurence Terrazas had relinquished his United States citizenship by taking an oath of allegiance to Mexico in 1971, as determined by the Secretary of State under 8 U.S.C. § 1481. After a trial de novo and multiple appeals, including to the Supreme Court which clarified the evidentiary standards, the district court denied the plaintiff's petition for judgment and affirmed its earlier ruling in favor of the defendant. The court reasoned that the evidence, including the oath's renunciatory language, Terrazas's conduct indicating intent to make Mexico his permanent home, and his efforts to avoid U.S. citizenship obligations, established by a preponderance of the evidence that he voluntarily committed an act of expatriation with the intent to relinquish citizenship. The relevant inquiry focused on his state of mind in 1970-71, not his subsequent efforts to retain citizenship.

immigrationcivil rights

In Paskuly v. Marshall Field & Co., the plaintiff sued her employer alleging sex discrimination in job assignments, wages, training, promotions, transfers, discharges, and layoffs under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, initially as an individual action but later seeking to convert it into a class action on behalf of similarly situated female employees. The court denied the defendant's motion to strike the class allegations, allowing them to relate back to the original complaint filing under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c) because they arose from the same facts and caused no undue prejudice to the defendant given the shared evidence and Title VII's emphasis on class-wide remedies. The court granted the motion to strike the § 1981 claim, as that statute does not cover sex discrimination. It deferred ruling on the defendant's challenges to the affirmative action, layoff, and discharge claims pending further briefing.

civil rightslabor & employment

In this ERISA case, plaintiff David Frary, a former employee of Shorr Paper Products, sued the company, its owner, and the employees' profit sharing plan after being denied an early lump-sum distribution of his vested interest in the plan, unlike other terminated employees who had received such payments upon request. The plan's terms granted the manager discretion for early distributions but required that discretion to be exercised according to a uniform and nondiscriminatory policy. The court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, granted summary judgment to plaintiff against the company and plan (ordering immediate lump-sum payment of his interest), and granted summary judgment to the individual defendant Shorr. The core reasoning was that plaintiff's allegations and the record established a violation of the plan's nondiscrimination requirement, allowing him to enforce his rights under ERISA, while Shorr was not the plan manager and thus not liable.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatory

The United States sued R.I.T.A. Organics under section 592 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for allegedly making false statements when importing pearl essence between 1970 and 1974, seeking recovery of the merchandise's domestic value. The defendant moved for partial summary judgment on 28 of the 32 entries, arguing that the five-year statute of limitations in 19 U.S.C. § 1621 barred the claims because Customs had sufficient notice of the falsities more than five years before the suit was filed in 1979. The court denied the motion, holding that section 592 covers negligent as well as fraudulent violations and that the discovery rule requires determining when the violations were or should have been discovered through reasonable diligence. Because the parties presented conflicting facts on the timing of discovery for each entry, genuine issues of material fact remained that precluded summary judgment.

business & regulatoryprocedure

In Mulcahy v. Harris Corp., plaintiff Michael Mulcahy sued the manufacturer of an offset printing machine, Harris Corporation, for personal injuries sustained in 1977 while operating the machine at his employer Great Lakes Graphics, Inc., alleging strict tort liability under Illinois law. Harris filed a third-party complaint seeking indemnity, contribution, and equitable apportionment from Great Lakes and its workers' compensation insurer Zurich, based on allegations that the employer removed a safety guard and that both the employer and plaintiff misused the machine. The court granted the motions to dismiss the third-party claims, holding that Illinois law governed the case under the most significant relationship test and that the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in Skinner v. Reed-Prentice Division Package Machinery Co., which first permitted contribution among joint tortfeasors in such actions, applied only prospectively to occurrences on or after March 1, 1978. Because the injury predated that date, pre-Skinner Illinois law barred the contribution and indemnity claims, and the court found the defendant's additional arguments for applying Skinner or alternative theories unavailing.

torts & liabilityprocedure

This case involved a pro se plaintiff suing a car dealership under the federal Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act for alleged odometer tampering in violation of section 1984 and failure to provide proper signed and dated odometer mileage disclosure statements during vehicle transfers in 1973 as required by section 1988. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the action. The core reasoning was that the claims were time-barred by the Act's two-year statute of limitations, which begins to run from the date liability arises rather than from discovery of the violation, making the 1979 filing untimely based on the undisputed facts of the chain of title transfers.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved plaintiff Paul Levin suing Connecticut Blue Cross and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Act to recover denied insurance benefits for his son's long-term psychiatric hospitalization, after the carrier determined the treatment was for uncovered milieu therapy starting in November 1975. Count II alleged that OPM acted arbitrarily and capriciously by refusing to order the carrier to pay the disputed benefits of over $67,000. The court granted OPM's motion for summary judgment, holding that there were no material factual disputes and that OPM's decision was not arbitrary or capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act standard of review, as it was supported by the administrative record regarding the nature of the treatment. The court noted that its ruling addressed only OPM's review process and not the underlying contract claim against the carrier.

healthcarefederal powerprocedure

The case involved a former Women's Sports Coordinator at Bloom Township High School suing the school district and officials under Title IX for sex discrimination in her dismissal from the position. The court dismissed the Title IX claim on a motion under Rule 12(b)(6), holding that the statute does not apply to employment-related sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. It relied on precedents from the First, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits interpreting the legislative history of Title IX, noted the absence of any allegation that defendants received federal funds, and observed that remedies for employment discrimination are available under other statutes such as Title VII. The court granted the plaintiff leave to amend her complaint to pursue alternative theories such as constitutional or Section 1983 claims.

civil rightslabor & employment

This case involves a dispute under section 301(a) of the National Labor Relations Act in which the plaintiff, as administrator of a union employee benefit fund, sought to recover alleged delinquent contributions and damages from defendant Floyd Steel Erectors for the period 1973-1975. The defendant had entered into a compliance agreement binding it to a collective bargaining agreement (Local-ASE Agreement) that included a mandatory arbitration clause for disputes over fund contributions, and the plaintiff had initiated arbitration proceedings after filing suit. The court addressed cross-motions to confirm or vacate an arbitration award and determined that the contribution claims were arbitrable because they arose under the Local-ASE Agreement to which the defendant was bound. It reasoned that any obligation to contribute stemmed from that agreement, whose comprehensive arbitration provisions therefore applied, and directed the parties to proceed with arbitration on the merits while staying further judicial proceedings.

labor & employment

The case concerned a nonprofit environmental group and its employee who alleged that a municipal ordinance regulating peddling and door-to-door canvassing violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights; they sought declaratory and injunctive relief plus damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after the city restricted their solicitation activities. The city moved to dismiss, arguing that prior litigation had mooted the equitable claims and that no valid claim for monetary relief existed. The court denied the motion, holding that the dispute remained a live controversy and that the plaintiffs had alleged facts sufficient to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

free speechcivil rights

Michael Perry, a blind citizen holding a Class II peddler’s license from the City of Chicago, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging municipal ordinances that prohibit peddling merchandise in the downtown area, asserting violations of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, discriminatory treatment due to exceptions for holiday and charitable sales, and vagueness in the city’s disorderly conduct ordinance. The defendants moved for partial summary judgment on Counts I–III of the complaint. The court granted the motion, finding no genuine issues of material fact and concluding that Perry had not established a protected liberty or property interest in peddling downtown or shown that the ordinances lacked a rational basis.

civil rightsbusiness & regulatoryprocedure