In United States v. Keane, Alderman Thomas E. Keane was convicted in 1974 of mail fraud and conspiracy for secretly acquiring tax-delinquent properties, using his city council position to reduce liens and facilitate sales to city agencies at favorable prices without disclosing his interest. After the Supreme Court's McNally decision narrowed the mail fraud statute to exclude schemes depriving victims only of intangible rights to honest government, Keane petitioned for a writ of error coram nobis to vacate the conviction. The district court denied the petition, holding that the evidence established a scheme causing tangible financial losses to the City of Chicago through undervalued foreclosure bids and overpriced property sales, which satisfied the post-McNally requirements, and that any erroneous jury instructions on intangible rights were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The case involved trustees of a multiemployer pension fund suing an employer under ERISA to compel interim withdrawal liability payments after the employer withdrew from the plan and ceased contributions. The court granted the fund's motion for summary judgment and denied the employer's cross-motion, ordering the employer to make the required interim payments pending arbitration of the total liability amount, plus past-due payments with interest. The court reasoned that ERISA establishes a pay-now-dispute-later framework requiring payments to begin within 60 days of demand regardless of challenges, with disputes resolved through mandatory arbitration, and declared the statutory exemption provision cited by the employer unconstitutional and null and void.
This case involves a creditor, Merrill Lynch, appealing a bankruptcy court's ruling that denied its motion to file a late claim in debtor Theora Dodd's Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch argued it never received notice of the bankruptcy petition or bar date, while Dodd contended that proper notice had been mailed. The district court reversed the bankruptcy court, holding that the presumption of receipt from the clerk's certificate of mailing was rebutted by evidence of Merrill Lynch's mail-handling procedures and lack of any record of the notice, and that an alleged phone call about the bankruptcy was inadmissible hearsay. As a result, Merrill Lynch was permitted to file its late claim, and Dodd's related motions were denied.
In this diversity case, plaintiffs sued Business News Publishing Company for breach of a written agreement involving the sale of their conceived cable industry product catalog "Ciindex," in exchange for five years of employment and profit sharing, after the company terminated payments and the relationship. The company counterclaimed for fraud and breach, and moved under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) to dismiss the amended complaint's counts for breach of contract, willful misconduct, defamation, and negligence. Applying Illinois law, the court granted dismissal only of the defamation count, finding no defamatory communication occurred from the alleged failure to inform plaintiffs of termination, while denying dismissal of the other counts because the complaint sufficiently alleged facts supporting a sale-of-assets component in the contract, potential negligence, and reckless conduct that could support punitive damages.
business & regulatorylabor & employmentproceduretorts & liability
In Terry v. Atlas Van Lines, Inc., plaintiffs Rothery Storage and Van Co. and its president Donald Terry sued Atlas Van Lines and its majority shareholder Wesray, alleging in Count I that Atlas, its board, and officers violated 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2) by conspiring to intimidate Rothery from participating in an antitrust suit against Atlas and to injure its business by terminating the agency agreement after it did participate. The court had previously dismissed the count under the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine, treating the alleged conduct as actions of a single corporate entity rather than a conspiracy among separate actors. On plaintiffs' motion for reconsideration, the court denied relief, holding that the presence of competing agents on Atlas's board and termination committee did not show they acted outside their fiduciary duties to the corporation, and it granted defendants' motion to dismiss the amended complaint because the new allegations remained conclusory, failed to allege actions benefiting competitors at Atlas's expense, and did not name individual defendants.
This case was a copyright infringement suit brought by owners of musical compositions against the owner of a Chicago restaurant for publicly performing seven copyrighted songs without a license from ASCAP or the copyright holders, both through live musicians and radio retransmissions over a multi-speaker system. After a bench trial, the court entered judgment for the plaintiffs, awarding $33,696.63 in damages and fees and issuing a permanent injunction against further unlicensed performances of the listed works. The court reasoned that the restaurant was a public place, the performances were therefore public under the Copyright Act, and the radio setup did not qualify for the statutory homestyle exemption because the receiver and speakers were commercial-grade equipment not commonly found in private homes and the business generated substantial revenue. The live performance was also found to be infringing because the proprietor bears responsibility even for non-employee musicians.