The Illinois First District recently examined the reach of a corporate officer’s commercial lease guaranty in a case involving a multi-year and multi-suite office lease. The office landlord plaintiff in Stonegate Properties, Inc. v. Piccolo, 2016 IL App (1st) 150182, sued to hold a corporate tenant’s CEO and lease guarantor liable for rental damages after the corporate tenant …
Category Archives: Business Torts
False Info in Employee Time Records Can Support Common Law Fraud Claim – IL Fed Court
Some key questions the Court grapples with in Laba v. CTA, 2016 WL 147656 (N.D.Ill. 2016) are whether an employee who sleeps on the job or runs personal errands on company time opens himself up to a breach of fiduciary or fraud claim by his employer. The Court answered “no” (fiduciary duty claim) and “maybe” (fraud claim) in an employment …
Feelin’ Minnesota? Most Likely (Court Pierces Corporate Veil of Copyright Trolling Firm To Reach Lawyer’s Personal Assets)
After being widely lambasted for its heavy-handed and ethically ambiguous (challenged?) BitTorrent litigation tactics over the past few years, an incarnation of the infamous Prenda law firm was recently hit with a piercing the corporate veil judgment by a Minnesota state court. In Guava, LLC v. Merkel, 2015 WL 4877851 (Minn. 2015), the plaintiff pornographic film producer, represented …