OPINION Justice GORDON delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Defendant Anthony Johnson was 17 years old on October 1, 2003, when he allegedly drove away from the scene of a shooting with the shooter in his motor vehicle. The shooter was acquitted, but defendant was convicted on October 10, 2007, by a separate jury in a simultaneous trial of first-degree murder on a theory of accountability and sentenced to 30 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). On...
OPINION Justice GOLDENHERSH delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Defendant, Christopher Coleman, was charged by information with three counts of first-degree murder (720 ILCS 5/9-1(a)(1) (West 2008)) after his wife, Sheri, and his two sons, Garett (d.o.b. 4/30/1998) and Gavin (d.o.b. 1/25/2000), were found dead in the family home. After a jury trial in the circuit court of Monroe County, defendant was convicted and sentenced to three concurrent life sentences. Defendant...
OPINION Justice HYMAN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Plaintiff, Himzo Rahic, a truck driver, suffered a serious head injury while picking up a load of freight from defendant, Satellite Air-Land Motor Service, Inc., but has no memory of the incident. Robert Kruse, the Satellite employee who loaded Rahic's truck and was the only person with Rahic immediately before he was injured, claims ignorance regarding how the injury occurred. Rahic sued Satellite, Kruse, and...
OPINION Justice ZENOFF delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Plaintiff, Michael Hiatt, was an employee of Western Plastics, Inc. (Western), which uses extruding machines to produce plastic sheets. The machines heat plastic pellets into a putty form and then push the material through metal rollers to create plastic sheets of desired thicknesses. On October 15, 2007, while cleaning one machine's spinning rollers, plaintiff's arms were crushed between the rollers and had to...
OPINION Justice BURKE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 After a bench trial, defendant, Michael S. Gabriel, was found guilty of violating an order of protection (720 ILCS 5/12-3.4(a) (West 2010)) and received one year of supervision. On appeal, he argues that he was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We reverse. 2 Paragraph 2 of the order of protection, entered on November 1, 2012, on behalf of Rilee Nichols ("petitioner" in the order), states: "(R03)...
OPINION Presiding Justice HOFFMAN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 The plaintiff, Larry D. Fabian, appeals from the circuit court order which dismissed, with prejudice, count I of his first amended complaint against the defendant, BGC Holdings, LP (BGC) pursuant to section 2-619(a)(9) of the Code of Civil Procedure (Code) (735 ILCS 5/2-619(a)(9) (West 2012)). In the dismissed count, the plaintiff alleged, in relevant part, that BGC violated the Illinois Wage Payment...
OPINION Justice HUTCHINSONM delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 On March 30, 2009, Walter Mankowski was admitted to the hospital following an eight-day inpatient treatment stay at the Total Health Institute (the Institute), and he subsequently died. On March 25, 2011, Walter's wife, Susan Mankowski, as special administrator of the estate of Walter Mankowski, and Walter's son, David Mankowski, filed a complaint alleging that defendants, Keith Nemec, D.C., and the...
OPINION Presiding Justice POPE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 On December 13, 2013, the trial court entered an order finding Country Mutual Insurance Company (Country) willfully failed to comply with orders the court entered on October 26, 2012, and February 21, 2013. As a result, the court found Country to be in indirect civil contempt "for its willful failure and refusal to obey the [c]ourt's October 26, 2012, and February 21, 2013[, o]rders." To purge itself...
OPINION Justice NEVILLE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 The trial court granted rescission of two insurance policies based on an alleged misrepresentation in the application for the first policy. We hold that a misrepresentation in an initial application does not justify rescission of a renewal of the policy, where the insured made no misrepresentation in the application for renewal and neither the new policy nor the application for renewal incorporated the...
OPINION Presiding Justice PUCINSKI delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Defendant mortgagor Monika Zubel appeals an order of the circuit court granting plaintiff mortgagee PNC Bank's (PNC) motion for summary judgment in this mortgage foreclosure action brought in accordance with provisions of the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Law (Foreclosure Law) (735 ILCS 5/15-1501 et seq. (West 2010)). Zubel also contests the propriety of the court's subsequent order approving the...
OPINION Justice PIERCE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Chapter VII, section B.2, of the Chicago Park District Code (Code) prohibits persons from remaining in Chicago parks from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Chicago Park District Code, ch. VII, B.2 (amended July 28, 1992); see also Chicago Municipal Code 10-36-185 (added Apr. 21, 1999). According to an official with the Chicago park district, the purpose of the ordinance is "to keep parks safe, clean, attractive and in good...
OPINION Justice McBRIDE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 In 2010, Jane E. Blumenthal filed suit to partition a Chicago home she owned with Eileen M. Brewer, her former domestic partner of 26 years. Brewer counterclaimed for various remedies, including to receive sole title to the property so that the couple's overall assets would be equalized after she stayed at home with the couple's three children while Blumenthal was the family's breadwinner. The trial court...
OPINION Justice LAVIN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 This interlocutory appeal arises from the trial court's order granting summary judgment in favor of plaintiff Anita Alvarez, in her capacity as Cook County State's Attorney, in a quo warranto action, pursuant to section 18-101 of the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/18-101 (West 2012)), against defendant Kenneth J. Williams. On appeal, defendant first contends that the trial court erred in granting summary...
OPINION Justice MASON delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 The trial court granted plaintiff Allstate Indemnity Company summary judgment, holding that it is not required to defend or indemnify Osvaldo Salazar, Manuel Salazar, and Graciela Salazar for an accidental shooting that took the life of Holly Hieber. Defendant Louise Hieber, as special administrator of her daughter's estate, appeals. We agree with the trial court that an exclusion in Allstate's policy of...
OPINION Presiding Justice SIMON delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Plaintiff Continental Casualty Company filed a complaint for declaratory judgment and other relief on November 30, 2012, seeking a declaration of the rights and obligations arising under multiple facultative reinsurance contracts issued to plaintiff by defendant MidStates Reinsurance Corporation. Defendant reinsured plaintiff for shares of policies between 1981 and 1984, under which plaintiff sought...
OPINION Justice CARTER delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 The State charged four individuals, including the defendant, Bethany McKee, with six counts of first degree murder in connection with the alleged strangling deaths of two males. After the indictment was filed, a reporter, respondent Joseph Hosey, wrote several articles that contained alleged details of the murders. During pretrial matters, counsel for McKee filed a motion to divest Hosey of his reporter's...
OPINION Justice HUDSON delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 The instant dispute concerns a proposal by plaintiff, Rock River Water Reclamation District, to build a sanitary sewer extension (Oak Crest project) to a residential development known as the Oak Crest subdivision. In October 2010, plaintiff adopted an ordinance providing for construction of the Oak Crest project. Connecting the Oak Crest project to the existing sanitary sewer system would require installation...
OPINION Presiding Justice SCHOSTOK delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 Defendant, Todd McCaslin, appeals from an order of the circuit court of De Kalb County granting the State's petition to terminate defendant from the De Kalb County drug-court program, to which he had been admitted under the terms of a plea agreement. Defendant argues that the State failed to prove that defendant "commit[ted] a new felony offense" in violation of the plea agreement. For the reasons...
OPINION Justice BIRKETT delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 On appeal, defendant, Luis I. Avila, challenges his sentence, imposed upon a plea of guilty, for home invasion (720 ILCS 5/12-11(a)(1) (West 2010) (possession of a dangerous weapon other than a firearm)) and aggravated unlawful use of a firearm (AUUF) (720 ILCS 5/24-1.6(a)(1), (a)(3)(C) (West 2010) (failure to possess a currently valid firearm owner's identification card)). He contends that (1) his extended-...
OPINION Justice HYMAN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. 1 In the midst of litigation over a debt owed it plaintiff, Charles Austin Limited, defendant A-1 Food Services, Inc., sold all of its assets to Forever Green Food Group, Inc. Once Charles Austin learned of the transaction, it added Forever Green as a defendant to the ongoing lawsuit. Forever Green, however, did not appear or otherwise respond, and Charles Austin then secured entry of a default judgment against...
