The case involved plaintiff Juanita Lara's claims against her employer Diamond Detective Agency and supervisor William Brown for a hostile work environment under Title VII due to alleged sexual harassment and for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on both counts. The alleged incidents, including comments about appearance and perfume, one attempt to look down her shirt, and a request for a date, were deemed insufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment, with many being isolated or disputed. For the emotional distress claim, the conduct did not rise to the level of extreme and outrageous behavior required under Illinois law.
The case involved a lawsuit by Danielle Cortes-Devito, the only African-American female paramedic employed by the Village of Stone Park Fire Department, who alleged that her coworkers created a hostile work environment through racially insensitive jokes, mockery of accents, isolation, and incidents like placing a urinal cake in her drink on May 27, 2002, leading to her constructive discharge; she brought claims under Title VII for gender and race discrimination as well as a state-law intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. The court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss Count I (gender discrimination under Title VII) for failure to state a claim and Count III (IIED) because it was time-barred under the one-year statute of limitations in the Illinois Tort Immunity Act, which began running on the date of the culminating incident, and was also preempted by federal law. The court denied the motion to dismiss Count II (race discrimination under Title VII), finding that the complaint's allegations fell within the scope of the plaintiff's EEOC charge and sufficiently stated a claim for a hostile work environment based on race.
Violeta Faur, an Illinois resident, sued Sirius International Corporation and related companies for breach of a health insurance policy and violation of the Illinois Insurance Code after the insurers denied coverage for her leukemia treatment costs exceeding $180,000. The policy included a forum selection clause designating Marion County, Indiana as the exclusive venue for disputes. The court found it had diversity jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction over the defendants based on their business activities in Illinois, and that the complaint stated valid claims. However, it enforced the forum selection clause, denying dismissal but granting a transfer of the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), as the plaintiff did not demonstrate the clause was unreasonable or that litigation in Indiana would deprive her of her day in court.
The case involved plaintiffs Paul A. Moore and Phillip S. Magiera suing AT & T Latin America Corporation for breach of contract and a declaratory judgment over the enforcement of stock options granted in a 1997 settlement agreement with a company that later merged into AT & T Latin. The plaintiffs, who reside in Illinois and Massachusetts, claimed that their options to purchase shares converted upon the 2000 merger and that AT & T Latin wrongfully refused to honor them when exercised. The court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss for improper venue under Rule 12(b)(3), finding that a substantial part of the events occurred in the Northern District of Illinois under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(a)(2). However, it granted the alternative motion to transfer the case to the Southern District of Florida under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), reasoning that Florida is a clearly more convenient forum due to the location of most key witnesses, the applicability of Florida law, and the overall interests of justice.
In this case, John Lincoln Wood and Garth Stennett filed petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate their 1989 convictions and sentences for involvement in an international drug conspiracy, claiming that the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey required such relief. The court denied the petitions, holding that they were untimely because the one-year statute of limitations under section 2255 had not been tolled by Apprendi, as the Supreme Court had not made that decision retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review. Even assuming timeliness, the court reasoned that Apprendi would not apply because the petitioners' sentences did not exceed the statutory maximum of twenty years. The petitions were therefore dismissed.
In this case, Northern Border Pipeline Company sought an order granting it immediate possession of land parcels for which it had already obtained judgments of condemnation in order to construct a pipeline extension. The court granted the motion for possession as of April 1, 2001, conditioned on the plaintiff posting a $461,000 cash bond. The ruling rested on the company's preexisting entitlement to the easements via the condemnation judgments, its strong likelihood of success on the merits, the irreparable harm from delayed construction costs that could not be recovered, the lack of identified harm to defendants, and the public interest in enabling gas service for the 2001 winter heating season.