Court consistently denies overbroad relief, refers matters to a master for fact-finding, and insists on procedural prerequisites rather than expanding judicial oversight. Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Aut… ↗ Barksdale v. Ryan ↗
Affiliations
District Court, N.D. Illinois — appointed by John F. Kennedy
This case involved a civil contempt proceeding against Louis Beck for allegedly violating a 1970 permanent injunction that barred infringement of patents on a paint spray pump's hydraulic system, which used cavitation cooling to prevent overheating during standby. Beck, who had acquired the defunct defendant corporation and formed a new company, began manufacturing a similar pump called the Spraymate B, which he claimed avoided the patented cooling process through a spring-loaded piston design. The court determined that the plaintiff failed to meet its heavy burden of proving contempt by clear evidence leaving no fair ground of doubt that the new pump infringed the patents or that Beck's asset transfers and corporate actions warranted personal liability. It therefore discharged the order to show cause, denied the motion to substitute Beck and his new company as defendants or to pierce the corporate veil, and refused to reopen the hearing for additional expert testimony.
This case involved plaintiffs who maintained a margin account with defendant broker-dealer Noyes & Company and alleged that the broker's advice on securities sales violated federal margin requirements under Regulation T, causing their account to become undermargined and resulting in financial losses; the complaint also claimed fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing the claims were invalid. The court denied the motion, holding that a private cause of action exists for violations of margin regulations when fraud or scienter is alleged, consistent with the Pearlstein doctrine and distinguishable from cases like Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder that require intent to deceive. The court further exercised pendent jurisdiction over the state-law claims due to a common nucleus of facts.
The case involved the Securities and Exchange Commission suing Univest, Inc. and related defendants for alleged violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in connection with sales of options on silver futures contracts and the later issuance of promissory notes to customers when the company ceased operations in 1974. At the close of the SEC's evidence, the court granted the defendants' motion for a directed verdict under Rule 50. The court held that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974, effective before the complaint was filed, gave the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over agreements and transactions involving commodity futures contracts, depriving the SEC of authority to bring the suit; alternatively, the non-interest-bearing promissory notes were not securities under the Howey test because they liquidated existing debts without any reasonable expectation of profits derived from the efforts of others.
This case is a class-action civil rights suit brought by black purchasers of new homes in the Chicago area against the builders and sellers, alleging that the defendants sold homes to black buyers on discriminatory prices and terms compared to those offered to white buyers in other areas. The plaintiffs asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982, among others, and the court ruled on numerous motions to dismiss or strike portions of the amended complaint. The court denied the motions to dismiss the § 1982 claims, holding that they were viable under binding Seventh Circuit precedent recognizing an “exploitation theory” of liability and that the Illinois statute of limitations had not run because it began only upon termination of the installment contracts. It similarly denied dismissal of the § 1981 claims, applying liberal construction rules for civil-rights complaints, and addressed procedural issues such as the timeliness of adding a deceased defendant’s estate. The court granted one motion to dismiss a claim against a particular defendant but otherwise allowed the litigation to proceed.
In this case, plaintiff Alberto-Culver sued defendant Gillette alleging that a television commercial misrepresented the qualities of both companies' hair rinse products, and later added claims including under the Sherman Act. Plaintiff moved to amend the complaint to add factual allegations about subsequent misrepresentations in print ads, displays, and another commercial under the existing counts. Defendants opposed the amendment on grounds of undue prejudice from delay and lack of jurisdiction under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act because the new commercial did not reference plaintiff's product. The court granted the motion, holding that under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 leave to amend should be freely given absent undue prejudice, which was not present here since the amendment supplemented rather than altered the existing claims, and that the Lanham Act creates a cause of action for false representations about a defendant's own goods even without direct comparison to the plaintiff's product.
The case arose after plaintiff Robinson was injured in a 1973 car accident with an IRS agent; his insurer settled the property-damage claim for $737.90 and both signed a voucher containing a general release of claims against the United States arising from the same accident, after which Robinson filed a separate administrative claim for personal injuries that the agency denied as barred by the release. The United States moved under Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss the ensuing Federal Tort Claims Act suit or, alternatively, for summary judgment on release and statute-of-limitations grounds. Treating the motion as one for summary judgment, the court denied it, holding that the action was timely filed and that, under applicable Illinois law governing releases, the voucher’s specific recitation of only the property-damage claim limited the effect of the general release language, so the personal-injury claim was not precluded.
