Illinois is the busiest forum in the country for consumer class
actions, and the theories change faster than most businesses can track.
A company that believed its exposure was under control discovers a new
statute, a new wave of filings, and a new set of plaintiffs’ lawyers at
the door. The encouraging news for defendants is that the last two years
have also produced real defense victories, and a business that
understands the current landscape can meet these cases from a position
of strength.
Our firm defends businesses against consumer class actions of every
kind, from biometric and genetic privacy…
Continue Reading Defending Consumer Class Actions in Illinois: The Cases Shaping 2026 and How Businesses Fight Back

A former employee, a competitor, or an anonymous account posts
something false about your company, and it spreads before you even see
it. A one-star review claims you cheated a customer you never had. A
rival tells your biggest client that you are about to go under. A
message board names you and calls you a fraud. The statement is not
merely insulting. It costs you the client, the deal, and the reputation
you spent years earning, and the person spreading it is hiding behind a
screen.
Illinois law gives a defamed business or professional real remedies,
and the window…
Continue Reading Lies That Cost You Business: How Illinois Businesses and Professionals Fight Back Against Defamation

You wrote an honest review, warned a neighbor about a contractor, or
posted your side of a dispute, and now a demand letter or a summons says
you defamed someone. The lawsuit is frightening, and it is often meant
to be. The person suing may want to silence you as much as to win.
Before you panic, delete the post, or apologize your way into an
admission, understand two things. Illinois gives a defamation defendant
strong defenses, and in many cases an insurance policy you already pay
for will hire the lawyer who raises them.
This is a plain guide…
Continue Reading Sued for Libel Over a Review or Post? Your Illinois Defenses, and Who Pays to Defend You

A judgment is a piece of paper that says you were right. It is not money. Illinois will not collect it for you, the clerk will not call the defendant, and nothing about the entry of judgment stops a debtor from doing what many of them started doing the week they were served. The building goes into a spouse’s name. The operating account empties into a new company with a similar name, the same phone number, and the same customers. The equipment sells at a price nobody negotiated to an entity a brother-in-law formed in March. The creditor who spent…
Continue Reading The Judgment Is Not the Payday: Collecting in Illinois When the Debtor Has Already Moved the Money

The complaint arrives about six months after the sale, and it is never really about the car. It is about the fee petition. A customer who bought a nine-year-old vehicle with ninety thousand miles on it, signed a buyer’s order marked as is, and drove it for five months now says the dealership committed consumer fraud. The pleading recites a repair the buyer paid for, attaches nothing, and demands actual damages, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. Plaintiff’s counsel knows that the fees are the leverage and that the cost of…
Continue Reading Sued by a Customer Over a Used Car? What an Illinois Dealer Actually Has to Answer For

The Business Was Not What They Promised: A Buyer’s Fraud Remedies and a Seller’s Defenses in an Illinois Sale
You closed on the acquisition in the spring, and by summer the
business you bought had stopped resembling the one you were sold. The
marquee customer, the one whose contract anchored the projections, had
given notice weeks before the closing, and the seller knew it. The
receivables that looked current were stale. The inventory was thinner
than the schedule. A tax exposure the seller called routine turned out
to be a six-figure problem already brewing. You sent a wire for a…
Continue Reading The Business Was Not What They Promised: A Buyer’s Fraud Remedies and a Seller’s Defenses in an Illinois Sale

Thirty days. That is the window a defendant has to decide where an Illinois class action will be litigated, and the decision is frequently made by default, in the middle of a document collection, by a company that has not yet read the complaint closely enough to know what it is holding. The forum question looks procedural. It is not. It determines which standing doctrine applies, whether a certification ruling can be appealed before trial, which precedents bind the judge, and in the privacy and statutory damages cases that dominate Illinois class litigation, it often determines whether the case survives…
Continue Reading Thirty Days to Choose the Courthouse: Removal, Standing, and the Remand Fight in Illinois Class Actions

You and your partner built the company as equals. Fifty-fifty feltfair at the start. It does not feel fair now. One of you wants to cash out and the other wants to keep building. Or you cannot agree on payroll, on a distribution, on whether to take the loan, and every vote splits two to two. Checks wait for a second signature that never comes. Employees ask who is in charge, and you no longer have a clean answer.
A 50/50 company that stops agreeing can freeze in place. The deadlock feels permanent because neither owner can outvote the other,…
Continue Reading Business Divorce in Illinois: How 50/50 Owners Break a Deadlock and Force a Fair Buyout

The complaint arrives styled as a class action, and the number at the bottom of the page is built to frighten you. A single fee, a single line in a form contract, or a single advertisement, multiplied across every customer you have served for years, until the demand looks large enough to swallow the company. The plaintiff’s lawyer wants you to see that number and reach for the checkbook before anyone asks the harder question. Can this case be a class action at all?
Most consumer fraud class actions are won or lost at class certification, the stage where the…
Continue Reading Sued in an Illinois Consumer Fraud Class Action? How Defendants Defeat Class Certification

By Peter S. Lubin and James V. DiTommaso
You own half of a company you helped build, and the other owner has turned on you. The distributions stopped, but the salary he pays himself did not. You asked to see the books and got silence. Maybe he changed the password on the shared drive, put his brother-in-law on payroll, or started a side venture that looks a great deal like yours. You do not know whether you are about to lose the business, your investment, or both, and every day you wait feels like a day he is using against…
Continue Reading Business Partners at War in Illinois: What a Chicago Commercial Litigator Actually Does to Protect You

By Peter S. Lubin and James V. DiTommaso
A process server hands your company a class action complaint late on a Friday. By Monday you are reading a theory that turns one disputed
charge or one form document into a claim brought on behalf of thousands of people. The instinct is to wait, to answer the complaint, and to see how bad it gets. That instinct is a mistake. What a defendant does in the first thirty days often decides the case, because the early choices
about where the lawsuit is heard and whether the plaintiff can clear the threshold…
Continue Reading Served With a Class Action in Illinois? The First Moves That Decide the Case

You own thirty percent of the company, and for the first ten years that felt like a partnership. Then the managing member stopped returning your calls. The distributions shrank and then stopped, though the company is plainly doing well. You are no longer copied on decisions. The manager’s salary has grown to a number that happens to absorb most of the profit you used to share. You are still a member on paper, but you have been pushed to the door without anyone touching the lock.
This is a freeze-out, and the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act gives a minority…
Continue Reading Frozen Out of Your Illinois LLC? What the LLC Act Lets a Minority Member Do

The offer to buy your shares arrives as a single page. You built a quarter of the company over fifteen years, and the letter values your stake at a number that would not cover two good years of the distributions you used to take. The controlling owner calls it generous. His accountant has trimmed it once for your lack of control, trimmed it again because the shares are hard to sell, and used a valuation date that happens to fall right after the worst quarter in the company’s history. The message is that this is the market speaking, and that…
Continue Reading Being Bought Out of Your Illinois Company? Why the “Fair Value” of Your Shares Is Higher Than the Offer