A putative class of over 900 plaintiffs sued 20 municipal defendants, including the City of LaSalle, Illinois, LaSalle’s Chief of Police, and two of its police officers. The suit arose from the elected LaSalle County State’s Attorney’s unsuccessful attempt to create his own drug interdiction task force, known as SAFE, which disbanded in 2015 in…
Read MoreIn Campos v. Cook County, et al., No. 18-3472, County correctional officer was twice terminated, and his termination was twice vacated by the circuit court upon judicial review. After eight years of termination proceedings and suspension without pay, the officer brought a federal Section 1983 lawsuit claiming that the termination proceedings violated his substantive due…
Read MoreIn two recent cases, Alarm Detection Systems, Inc. v. Orland Fire Protection District, and Alarm Detection Systems, Inc. v. Village of Schaumburg, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the dismissal of two local dispatch centers in federal civil rights and anti-trust actions filed by private alarm companies. In the Schaumburg case, a group…
Read MoreOn June 20, 2019, the Supreme Court decided McDonough v. Smith. In McDonough, a commissioner of the county board of elections was investigated for forged absentee ballots in a 2009 primary election in New York. The commissioner alleged that the district attorney fabricated evidence against him and used it to secure a grand jury indictment….
Read MoreIf a police officer arrests someone in retaliation for protected speech, it’s a First Amendment violation. But suppose that apart from the speech, there was probable cause to arrest that person for a crime? Lower courts have long disagreed whether such a person could bring a claim alleging a First Amendment retaliatory arrest. Twice in…
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