The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has reversed a decision by a district court judge of the Southern District of Illinois. Reginald Pittman was a pretrial detainee in the Madison County Jail when he hanged himself from the bars of his cell with a blanket. He did…
Baxter International was sued in a second wave of multidistrict litigation filed by hemophiliacs who alleged that they contracted HIV or Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products. Baxter paid $15 million to settle the lawsuits and then filed its own lawsuit against Axa Versicherung and a German insurance company for…
Missouri’s HB 153 became law recently, supplanting the expert witness screening standard set out in the Federal Rules of Evidence 702, 703, 704 and 705. Missouri’s new expert witness standard effectively submits expert testimony in most civil and criminal cases to the analysis set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow…
In a federal court of appeals, the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) was addressed by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago regarding the specificity required in complaints. On Sept. 1, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago affirmed dismissal of the amended…
The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has entered into a settlement agreement that will provide a process by which parolees will learn their rights and receive representation of lawyers during their parole revocation process. There was no availability of assigned legal counsel for parole violators before this agreement. This agreement…
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has affirmed a district court decision where sanctions were allowed in the form of attorney fees. The court of appeals stated that under Federal Rule 37, sanctions may include an order to pay the amount of reasonable expenses incurred in preparing the…
Three Illinois workers and two public worker unions waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a carbon copy of their union-fee dispute. The case they were waiting on from the Supreme Court was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. Because of the death of Supreme Court Associate Justice…
About 1,000 prison inmates, some of whom have been in prison for more than 50 years for murders they committed as teenagers, may get a chance to be free. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Henry Montgomery, who has been in prison for more than 50 years for…
Caterpillar Inc. purchased a factory owned by Bucyrus International located in Milwaukee. That facility was making strip-mining equipment. Because of the purchase, Caterpillar assumed the labor contract Bucyrus previously had negotiated with the United Steelworkers Union. About two months after the July 2011 purchase, a 36-ton piece of machinery called…
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — considered by many to be the most effective piece of civil rights law ever passed in the United States. During the 50 years since its passage, it has been renewed by Congress several times without much alteration…