Corporate & Commercial

Numerous Illinois cases have considered the question of when an insurer must defend or indemnify an additional insured. E.g., Pekin Ins. Co. v. Centex Homes, 2017 IL App (1st) 153601; National Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, PA. v. R. Olson Constr. Conts., Inc., 329 Ill.App.3d 228 (2d Dist. 2002); Commonwealth Edison Co. v. National Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, PA., 323 Ill.App.3d 970 (1st Dist. 2001).  In most additional insured coverage cases, two factors are critical to the outcome. The first is the wording of the additional insured endorsement, and the second is the extent to which facts outside the…
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A doctor who owned her own practice, billed her patients directly, and filed taxes as a self-employed physician was not an employee of the hospital she had privileges at, and therefore was not entitled to sue the hospital for discrimination after it revoked her practice privileges. For almost 13 years, Dr. Yelena Levitin performed surgeries at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Levitin is a female, Jewish surgeon of Russian descent. She owns and operates Chicago Surgical Clinic, Ltd., a private medical practice. From 2000 until 2013, most of her revenue came from the work she performed at Northwest.…
The buzz started last year when the Louisiana Retail Food and Beverage E-Commerce Task Force met to review and consider home delivery of alcoholic beverages. According to the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report piece at the time, both Instacart and Drizly appeared to testify about the growing trend in American lifestyle choices – home delivery of stuff people want. Prior to 2019, the Louisiana legislature killed bills for home delivery. But the bill and service found renewed momentum this year and has passed You can read the enrolled text of HB508 here, which has been sent to Louisiana’s Governor…
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1. How did you get Patrice Poltzer Creative started?I was at the TODAY show for six years where I learned from the best in the business how to tell a story and captivate an audience, winning several awards while I was there. Because I came into my role as a TODAY show producer already knowing how to shoot and edit video, I was also able to create original digital content alongside my job of making television which created this hybrid storytelling job and allowed me to think of stories from a multi-platformed discipline. When I was on maternity leave with…
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This month the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (“CASE Act”) was introduced in the Senate (S. 1273) by a number of Senators including Dick Durbin of Illinois and in the House (H.R. 2426) by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Doug Collins. The CASE Act seeks to provide individual creators and small businesses, who create the vast majority of creative works but are the least able to afford costly intellectual property litigation, with an affordable forum to adjudicate small claims against copyright infringers. The CASE Act would create the equivalent of a small claims court…
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A small producer of musical instruments sued Guitar Center, alleging that Guitar Center violated its trademark on the name for a line of woodwind instruments. The plaintiff made a mistake in its suit, however, and named several subsidiary corporations of Guitar Center as additional defendants. After a trial, a jury was asked to determine whether each of the organizations were liable for infringing conduct. The jury, however, found that only the sales that occurred at Guitar Center branded stores were infringing, which amounted to a tiny fraction of the total sales across Guitar Center and all of its subsidiary brands.…
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By Doni Robinsondoni@jayaramlaw.com Fans of Rihanna are likely aware of her tremendously successful makeup line, FENTY BEAUTY, which launched in in September 2017. Some may even be aware that the name itself came from the star’s last name – Robyn Rihanna Fenty. As any good brand owner does, Rihanna applied for several FENTY trademarks as early as June 2014 covering everything from her beauty line, to her apparel and upcoming luxury fashion line. Rihanna’s strained relationship with her father has been something she has spoken about in the past. Thus, it came as no surprise to many that in…
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By Palak V. Patelpalak@jayaramlaw.com Cloud Gate, colloquially known as the Bean, is one of the most prominent symbols of Chicago. The artist, Anish Kapoor, has gained widespread recognition for designing the iconic Millennium Park sculpture.  However, in art circles, Kapoor is known as a divisive figure due to his monopoly on the “blackest black” color. Kapoor is the sole artist that has access to Vantablack acrylic paint. Vantablack is so dark that it absorbs 99.96% of light. Kapoor uses this nearly pure black paint to create the illusion of a void. Artists have been outraged and confused as to…
By Vivek Jayaramvivek@jayaramlaw.com It’s an inevitable scenario for most large companies: an employee signs a confidential separation agreement upon being terminated.  The employee — irate — logs onto Glassdoor.com and airs her grievances (and the company’s dirty laundry) anonymously on the company’s Glassdoor page. The C-suite is fuming.  They march into the GC’s office: “didn’t we tell you to make sure the separation agreement prohibited her from saying bad stuff about us?” Hopefully, our GC included a non disparagement or “no negative statements” clause to the agreement.  If she did, then the identity of the poster is likely discoverable.…
By Julia Broder julia@jayaramlaw.com The phrase ‘work-life balance’ is slowly phasing out of the corporate lexicon as new research encourages employers to pursue holistic company policies regarding their employees’ wellness. Like the old model of “balance,” the new “effectiveness” model allows employees to prioritize their personal and professional time. Unlike the “balance” approach, it does not insinuate that employees must designate equal, in-flexible amounts of time to both areas of life. This flexibility maximizes the quality of their work product. The Catalyst Organization defines Work-Life Effectiveness as a “talent management strategy that focuses on doing the best work at the…
By Alec Schulmanalec@jayaramlaw.com Copyright. The Constitution. A sunken pirate ship. The Supreme Court. On Monday, June 3, 2019, the Supreme Court chose to hear a case involving a copyright infringement claim brought by a videographer against the state of North Carolina for publishing the plaintiff’s footage and photographs without the plaintiff’s permission. The subject of those videos and photographs?  Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship. In short, the State of North Carolina published the videographer’s work on the internet without the author’s consent. In 2013, the parties had seemed to reach a settlement under which North Carolina would cease infringing the…
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Recently, a unanimous U.S. Third Circuit appellate court upheld payroll company Automatic Data Processing’s (“ADP”) non-compete agreements but remanded the case to the district court for tailoring. The federal appeals court reversed a decision by the district court which had found the covenants not to compete to be unenforceable. In reversing the lower court, the Third Circuit found that the non-compete agreements were necessary to protect ADP’s client relationships and goodwill, interests that New Jersey courts, “consistently recognize as legitimate.” According to the Third Circuit’s opinion, ADP requires certain high-performing employees to sign non-compete agreements and similar pledges in order…
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Back in 2012, facing extreme reluctance from employers, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (“EEOC”) published guidance on whether and when to hire workers with criminal backgrounds who had done their time and were, hopefully, ready to be productive citizens and workers. But employer reluctance to consider hiring ex-cons has waned in the past seven years as the economy has improved, the population has continued to age, and at least in Illinois, the population size has fallen due to people leaving for faster-growing states and fewer immigrants coming into the state.  Meantime, more than 27,000 people got out of state prisons…
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A class action lawsuit recently filed in a federal court in Washington accuses Getty Images, Inc. (“Getty”) of allegedly duping customers into paying for fictitious copyright licenses for images in the public domain that can be used freely. The plaintiff in the case, Texas digital marketing company CixxFive Concepts LLC, claims that it was one of the victim’s of Getty’s wrongful conduct and alleges that Getty’s actions violated the RICO Act and state consumer protection laws. The wrongful conduct, according to the complaint, was not merely charging for the public domain images but rather deceiving customers into believing they needed…