ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews legislation in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. This week he covers toxic torts, the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, special interrogatory, the Equal Pay Act of 2003, and the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act.
Tyria B. Walton has been appointed as a Cook County circuit judge in the First Judicial Subcircuit.
The appointment is effective June 25 and will conclude on Dec. 7, 2020, following the November 2020 general election.
Walton has served for over 20 years as an assistant public defender in the law office of the Cook County Public Defender, with a primary focus in first-degree murder defense. Over the past year, she has won her clients six not guilty verdicts in murder trials.
Join us online from noon until 1 p.m. on July 23 to learn how to take your PowerPoint slides to the next level.
This one-hour live webinar includes topics such as working with videos and images, animation, transitions, and timings.
Read the July 2019 Illinois Bar Journal and get to know new ISBA President David Sosin. Sosin, a partner of the Orland Park firm of Sosin, Arnold & Schoenbeck, practices real estate, land use, and zoning law. He also serves as attorney for the Village of Crestwood just east of Orland Park. He has a long history of bar leadership, including stints as president of the Southwest Suburban Bar Association and the Illinois Bar Foundation prior to entering the leadership track at the ISBA, where his wife, Janet, recently retired as director of bar services after more than 30 years of service.
Sosin sees many needles to move during the 2019-20 bar year. Included among his top priorities are: attorney wellness, law firm succession planning, bar association leadership, and health insurance for lawyers and firms.
The Illinois Supreme Court issued five opinions on Thursday, June 20. The ISBA's panel of leading civil attorneys reviewed the opinions and provided summaries. In Nichols v. Fahrenkamp, the court took on the question of whether quasi-judicial immunity extends to court-appointed guardians ad litem in the context of the administration of funds from a personal injury lawsuit. The court dismissed a man’s class action lawsuit against Walgreens on the grounds that his claim was precluded under the voluntary payment doctrine in McIntosh v. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. In County of Will v. Pollution Control Board, the court upheld the board’s determination that groundwater monitoring regulations were unnecessary to protect groundwater from clean construction and demolition debris and uncontaminated soil fill operations. In Ward v. Decatur Memorial Hospital, the court weighed in on whether res judicata bars a plaintiff from refiling an action because he voluntarily dismissed the third amended complaint after a circuit court involuntarily dismissed several counts from the original, first, and second amended complaints in the initial action. The court addressed whether a court may impose sanctions in the form of attorney fees under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 137(a) against a plaintiff to compensate an attorney defending himself against a frivolous cause of action in McCarthy v. Taylor.
In 2016, a new game called Pokémon Go invited players to use their smartphone cameras to find and battle animated creatures the game layered on top of, or near, images of real objects displayed on their smartphone screens. Creatures could be hunted anywhere: on sidewalks, on pets, at restaurants, in parks, and on your neighbor's backyard patio. The game was a massive, worldwide success. But news stories proliferated of Pokémon hunters entering other people's property without permission, causing traffic accidents, and congregating in large groups at random locations.
Read Alexander Porter’s article, “Can You See It? Predicting an Augmented Future for Illinois Attorneys,” in June’s Illinois Bar Journal for an overview of how augmented reality likely will touch upon many legal issues, including trespassing, public and private nuisance, privacy, personal and financial data, terms of use, and intellectual property.
While retirement is usually planned, the sudden death or disability of an attorney requires contingency planning.
It’s especially important for private-practice attorneys to designate a representative on their ARDC registration documents or certify that they have made a similar designation in a succession plan or comparable agreement. The representative would be able to take limited fiduciary action if the designating attorney loses the capacity to run his or her firm, abandons the practice, or dies, thus preventing the negligence of client matters.
Attorney Howard Ankin discusses how to evaluate permanency in a workers’ compensation claim.
Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to low-income individuals in central and southern Illinois, is seeking a staff attorney at the Northern Regional Office in Springfield.
The position includes representing victims of domestic violence in a variety of matters, including but not limited to orders of protection, civil no stalking orders, and divorces. The position also includes representation of low-income persons in routine and complex housing and consumer litigation and expungement cases, as well as participation in community legal education and outreach.
By Beverly A. Allen
In 2012, Legal Service Corporation awarded a Technology Initiative Grant to Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, now Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, and its project partners, Prairie State Legal Services, Legal Assistance Foundation, Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO), and PSTI to develop a statewide online access system, which would serve as a virtual entryway to the Illinois legal services delivery system. Land of Lincoln Legal Aid serves 65 counties in central and southern Illinois. Prairie State Legal Services serves 36 counties throughout northern and central Illinois. Legal Assistance Foundation serves all of Cook County. ILAO developed a statewide legal services website that serves advocates and self-represented litigants in the state of Illinois by providing access to legal information. The award-winning website functions as a search engine for people to find information and assistance related to their legal problems. PSTI is a company that developed the cloud-based case management software program, Legal Server, that is utilized by the three legal service project partners to manage their cases.