Contract Performance Cases

• Defense of manufacturer accused of failing to design and build a new video-dispensing machine.
• Recovery for a manufacturer against an equipment supplier for failing to meet specifications in the supply of a new product assembly line.
• Successful state court bench trial for breach of contract by a plumbing contractor.
• See also, our contract, system-wide impact and supplier litigation cases involving franchise & dealership matters.

Sale of Business Victory In Arbitration

• Teamwork led to a seven-figure success in a lengthy commercial arbitration hearing, representing the family owners of a noted Chicago retail sporting goods business. After the closing, the buyer (a larger regional chain) alleged a claim for breach of a warranty as to the value of the inventory, and withheld the balance of the purchase price on that alleged basis. After more than two weeks of testimony, the arbitrator awarded our clients 100% of the balance due under the sales contract and 100% of the legal fees that our clients had expended in the case as the prevailing parties.

Fraud & RICO Cases

• Recovery under RICO and the federal securities laws for 30 investors who were induced by their dentist to invest in oil wells.
• Federal court jury trial on RICO and federal securities fraud claims for a defrauded restaurant investor.
• Successful defense of debtor in bankruptcy (a lawyer and real estate developer) in a dischargeability hearing in which the creditor alleged that the debtor had procured a loan by fraud.
• Successfully defended a bank against a RICO counterclaim in the trial of a mortgage foreclosure case.
• See also, our fraud cases involving franchise & dealership matters.

Shareholder & Partnership Disputes

• Defense of controlling shareholders against claims of fraud brought by minority shareholder.
• Representation of law firm partner expelled from partnership in action for accounting.
• Representation of minority shareholders in actions for waste, freeze-out, fraud.
• Shareholder’s derivative lawsuit challenging business judgment of directors of a manufacturing company.

Victory in a CERCLA Trial

• Federal court victory in a private Superfund action under the Federal Comprehensive Environmental Recovery Cost Liability Act (CERCLA), on behalf of a family-owned die casting business that faced potential clean-up liability due to the presence of PCBs which threatened to contaminate the Milwaukee River. The defendant was a previous owner that had not acquired the site until after the PCB contamination had already occurred, but we established that the defendant had assumed liability by engaging in a de facto merger with the prior operator, who had introduced the PCBs onto the premises.

Trade Secret Litigation

• Successful team defense against charges of theft of trade secrets filed by the owner of certain oven technology, who sought nearly $200 million in damages based on his allegation that McDonald’s Corporation had misappropriated the technology in rolling out its own oven product, and then cancelled the roll-out after receiving a cease and desist letter. A substantial part of this successful defense was to prove that the technology was already in the public domain (both in the United States and abroad), and that it did not confer a competitive advantage, as it did not perform adequately in testing.
• Defeated a request for a TRO against departing managerial employees in a nurse staffing agency who commenced competition while still employed by their former employer, where the employees allegedly downloaded all of the employer’s financial data that was revealed to their bank.

Trademark Litigation

• Successfully defended a national pizza franchisor on allegations of trademark infringement brought by local competitor.
• Successful defense of telemarketing firm accused of selling knock-off golf clubs.
• Defeating a requested injunction for alleged trademark infringement against a voluntarily terminated franchisee, where the franchisor had deliberately set a “trademark trap” by announcing the sudden end to post-expiration, at-will relationship, knowing that the franchisee could not possibly stop its usage of the trademarks in time to comply with the franchisor’s mandate.

Trustee Liability

• Obtained a seven-figure recovery on behalf of a trust beneficiary who was victimized by two of his brothers, who were co-trustees of a trust created by their father, where the co-trustees arranged for the transfer of valuable real estate to a new trustee in which they, but not their brother, was a beneficiary. The trustee-defendants argued, without success, that this transfer was a permitted “Starker” exchange under the Internal Revenue Code.

Title VII Employment Litigation

• Bellaver v. Quanex Corporation, 200 F.3d 485 (7th Cir. 2000). In a precedent setting Title VII victory in the United States Court of Appeals involving gender stereotyping, glass ceilings, and a phony reduction in force (RIF), where there was substantial evidence that a male supervisor routinely criticized the female manager for allegedly abrasive relations with her co-workers while tolerating far more abusive behavior by the male managers whose performance was inferior.
• Obtained a confidential six-figure settlement for a female salesperson of a computer software design and consulting firm, where her male managers had attempted to transfer her book of business to male salespersons.
• Defense victories at the EEOC level in refuting numerous discrimination claims against clients over the years.

Sexual Harassment Claims

• Obtained confidential settlements for victims of quid pro quo and hostile workplace sexual harassment.
• Conducted internal corporate investigation into allegations of quid pro quo sexual harassment against a franchisor’s key executive, establishing that the female subordinate had presented her allegations as a preemptive strike when she concluded that she faced termination or demotion for poor performance.

Executive Employment Contracts

• Successful defense (as successor counsel) of a privately held design firm against a breach of employment contract claim by its former president, where there were questions of fact as to whether the company had good cause for the termination, and whether the company had given the president adequate notice of the “good cause” defense. As successor counsel, Caruso raised an additional issue of whether the former president and the corporate attorney for the company had acted with conflicts of interest in establishing terms of the contract that were disadvantageous to the company.

Civil Rights Litigation

• Recovery by confidential settlement on the eve of jury trial on behalf of an Arkansas franchisee who was denied the opportunity to purchase a Chicago franchise, in a civil rights action alleging racial discrimination in franchising, where the franchisor had taken race into account in assigning different Chicago communities (by zip code) into segregated territories.
• Successful defense of suburban apartment building owners against a claim of racial discrimination brought by a tenant, who claimed that she had been placed under illegal surveillance and harassed by local police at the alleged behest of building management; when in fact, the apartment was frequently being visited by known members of a violent Chicago street gang.
• Successful defense of construction manager on claim of wrongfully terminating a minority subcontractor.
• Success at a zoning hearing on behalf of a minority business whose application had previously been denied.
• Pro Bono representation of several fair housing clients referred by a local fair housing agency.

Defamation Cases

• Successful defense of village trustees who allegedly defamed the village manager by commenting publicly on alleged mismanagement which resulted in the loss of federal grant money.
• Obtained a retraction and the removal of a web page that was defamatory against a business consultant client.
• Refusing to back down to threatened defamation claims after filing a system-wide lawsuit and speaking to the press, where the defendant in the case demanded that we dismiss our lawsuit in exchange for being released against the potential defamation claim.

Governmental Litigation

• Successful “Dormant Commerce Clause” challenge under the United States Constitution to a local ordinance that favored local suppliers at the expense of a client’s national distribution system, causing the local municipality to repeal its ordinance.
• Success in a zoning hearing on behalf of a pet store, overcoming objections by animal rights activists.
• Defense of U.S. citizens in a federal court interpleader filed by the U.S. Department of Customs against our clients and the Republic of Guatemala to determine ownership of certain pre-Columbian artifacts that our clients had imported from Guatemala (with proper documentation etc.), but which Customs had seized from the home of U.S. citizens at Guatemala’s request; in conjunction with a parallel criminal case.

Tort Claims & Class Actions

• Successful defense of civil claims for assault, battery and false arrest charges against a franchisor, stemming from the forcible removal of a disgruntled former franchisee from the annual convention, a private event.
• Team effort for the class plaintiffs in national Teflon class action litigation.
• Class action defense of franchise fraud case.

Real Estate Cases

• Defense of the Wrigley Field 7-Eleven franchisee at trial as a co-defendant with 7-Eleven, when the landlord sought eviction based on alleged under-reporting of sales revenue.
• Successful state court bench trials for breaches of commercial leases; and trial experience in cases involving breaches of real estate contracts.
• Resolving a lessor’s objections to having a client’s business located in a mall, where another tenant was claiming an exclusive right to a certain business category.

Antitrust Experience

• See our franchise, dealership and distribution section

Criminal Cases

• Successful team defense (acquittal) of a single defendant (the grandson of a Chicago Alderman) in a multi-defendant, gang-related murder trial where there was no evidence that the client was a member of the street gang or that he had been present at the scene of the homicide.
• Successful criminal defense (winning acquittals at trial) in three separate assault and battery cases arising in workplace settings, where employees claimed that they were physically assaulted by their managers (in one case) and by co-workers (in two other cases). In each of these cases, the complaining employees dropped their civil litigation plans after being defeated in the criminal cases.
• Successful defense at trial of client accused of running a gambling book.

The Best Defense

• Successful defense at trial (obtaining a mistrial) of an individual who was accused of three counts of assault/battery for allegedly starting a fight with three neighbors. Recognizing that the State was relying on three eyewitnesses to one, the “best defense” required Caruso to demonstrate during trial that one of the neighbors had actually started the fight. This was accomplished by carefully escalating the questions to the State’s witness that eventually led the witness to erupt in verbal and physical anger, on the witness stand, at the cross-examining attorney, Caruso. The plan worked. All three state’s witnesses left the courtroom in handcuffs. Caruso’s client walked out a free man.