“We win for a reason. When presenting a case to the judge or jury, our knowledge of the case – of the law, of the facts and of the client’s business – is so thorough that very little can be thrown at us to take us off our game.” – Gary Leydig

RECENT SUCCESSES

These recent successes are typical of the matters we handle.  They forged new law in support of our clients. The Girl Scouts case, for example, is the first decision in the nation to apply a state’s franchise or dealership statute to nonprofits.  Also typical of our cases is that we regularly face the nation’s finest and biggest regional and national law firms; often firms on the Am Law 100 list.  In the Girl Scouts case, our adversary was an Am Law 10 firm.

In Minnesota Supply Company v The Raymond Corporation, following a lengthy jury trial, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a jury verdict of more than 12.8 Million dollars, plus attorneys’ fees, obtained by us for a lift truck dealer whose principal, 50-year-old dealership agreement had been abruptly terminated.

In Girl Scouts of Manitou Council v Girl Scouts of the USA, we twice prevailed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In the first appeal, the Seventh Circuit adopted our argument that a local, nonprofit Girl Scouts council was entitled to the protections of a “dealer” under the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law (WFDL). The Court of Appeals ordered the extraordinary remedy of preliminarily enjoining the national Girl Scouts organization from interfering with or removing any of the territory or jurisdiction of our client’s council. In the second appeal, the Court again reversed the lower court, this time agreeing with our argument that enforcement of the WFDL caused no interference with the national organization’s First Amendment right of expressive association. The Seventh Circuit ordered judgment in favor of our client and, on remand, the lower court entered a permanent injunction against the national organization.

In Hytel Group v Butler, we pursued one of the first cases to be brought under Illinois’ newly enacted Citizens Participation Act. This Act seeks to prevent the use of abusive litigation as a means of punishing or preventing citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights of speech and to petition the government.  After being let go from her position as Hytel’s Controller, our client filed a claim with the Illinois Department of Labor to recover nominal wages withheld from her. In retaliation, her former employer slapped a multi-million dollar, punitive law suit against her. We stepped in at that point and successfully had the case dismissed under the new law. We also recovered all of the attorneys’ fees incurred in getting the case dismissed. Both the dismissal and fee award were affirmed on appeal. Indeed, the Illinois Court of Appeals ruled that the fees awarded in the lower court should be increased.