George R. Dougherty

George Dougherty is a trial lawyer who helps business people solve difficult problems.  In the past five years, he has obtained judgments or settlements in favor of the parties he has represented that total in excess of $70 million.  Over 90% of the cases that Mr. Dougherty has taken to judgment have been resolved in his clients’ favor.  Mr. Dougherty aggressively pursues litigants who abuse the court system, for example, having obtained six-figure monetary sanctions against opposing parties and the dismissal of alleged claims.

Mr. Dougherty concentrates his practice in commercial litigation (fraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty), privacy litigation, trade secret and restrictive covenant litigation, and other forms of business litigation.  He has defended in excess of 65 class actions for clients such as Home Depot, Household Retail Services, Loews Corporation, Lorillard Tobacco Company, and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.  He has both sued and defended prominent Chicago law firms in malpractice actions.  Other current or former clients include Chicago Magazine, CNA Insurance, Getco, Hanover Direct, Household International (now part of HSBC), Blount Parrish & Company, J.P. Morgan (Chase), LKQ Corporation, The Men's Wearhouse, Inc., Ronin Capital, and SIRIUS XM Radio Inc.

The following cases are examples of the type of success that Mr. Dougherty has had in his practice over the past 20 years:

• Our client sued a large international variable annuity company that had attempted to limit the client’s ability to transfer money within its products despite a contract which allowed for such frequent transfers.  Despite much negative press about “market timing,” we obtained the below cited published opinion granting summary judgment in favor of our client.  As part of the litigation, the defendant variable annuity company also had its 400-document privilege log stricken as a sanction, resulting in the production of each and every document on the log (later overturned on appeal, but not before our receipt of each of the documents) and was ordered to pay a six-figure sanction for violating an Agreed Protective Order.  Emerald Investments, LP v. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, No. 04 C 4285, 2005 WL 3470296 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 19, 2005).  After we obtained summary judgment, the case settled.
• A California class action attorney challenged our client’s practice of charging a fee for insurance as part of its product delivery practices.  In the below-cited opinion, the California appellate court held that our client was entitled to a judgment in its favor and that its practices were acceptable.  Wilson v. Brawn of California, Inc., 132 Cal. App. 4th 549, 33 Cal. Rptr. 3d 769 (Ct. of App. 2005).  Class action attorneys in New Jersey and Oklahoma also attempted to challenge the practice in separate cases, both of which were resolved favorably with written opinions.  Martin v. Hanover Direct, Inc., No. IN-96715 (Ct. of Appeals, Oklahoma 2005) (reversing trial court’s certification of class); Morris v. Hanover Direct, Inc., No. 8830-02 (Bergen County, N.J. Feb. 14, 2005) (denying class certification).
• A CFO, general counsel, and co-founder of a well-known trading company asked us to help him resolve a dispute with his former company, which had locked him out in an attempt to obtain his valuable financial interest in the company.  In the ensuing federal court litigation, the company alleged that our client had stolen a critical trade secret.  After extensive proceedings, we obtained the dismissal of the company's alleged federal claims as a Rule 37 sanction.  Based on the evidence we presented, the federal district court found in a published opinion that the company's witnesses had lied and fabricated evidence and had engaged in other forms of discovery misconduct, thereby justifying the dismissal of the company’s claims.  The parties subsequently settled their disputes.
• We represented a well-known insurance company in litigation against its former employees and other individuals who had started a competing company.  The defendants were accused of recruiting numerous company employees to work for their new business and using the company’s confidential information against it.  After contested proceedings in New York and Illinois, the matter settled.  The competing company is now effectively no longer in business, having conducted a self-managed runoff of its insurance and reinsurance portfolios, and having sold its only remaining active line of business to a third party.
• Mr. Dougherty has defended and prosecuted many restrictive covenant cases, often arising out of the (mis)use of confidential and trade secret information or the misappropriation of other sensitive business information.  Many of these cases had related arbitrations.  Representative clients in this type of work include American Express Financial Services, Chicago Magazine, CNA Insurance, IDS Life Insurance Co., and Tribune Company.
• Mr. Dougherty represented Home Depot in an alleged class action where the plaintiff claimed that certain treated wood sold by Home Depot was defective because it purportedly leached arsenic into the soil.  The trial court found that the claim was not appropriate for class treatment, a decision affirmed by the appellate court in Kitzes v. Home Depot, 872 N.E.2d 53 (Ill. App. 2007).  In Rickher v. Home Depot, No. 07-2850 (7th Cir.), the plaintiff claimed that the damage waiver sold by Home Depot in connection with tool rentals violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act.  The District Court granted summary judgment in Home Depot’s favor, a result affirmed by the Seventh Circuit.
• We represented American Express in Dwyer v. American Express, 273 Ill. App. 3d 742 (1st Dist. 1995), an alleged privacy class action.  This decision has been described as the “leading” privacy case in the country.  The case arose from American Express’ alleged use of cardholder information to create profiles of its customers.  We got the case dismissed by motion, a result affirmed in the cited opinion.  Two other plaintiff class action attorneys filed similar cases against American Express in Texas and New Jersey.  In Texas, we obtained a decision that required the class representative to pay the cost of notice to the alleged 40-million-person class.  See Walton v. American Express, 883 S.W.2d 703 (Tex. App. 1994).  In New Jersey, the judge dismissed the claim on motion.  See Arcidiacono v. American Express, 1993 U.S. Dist. Court, Lexis 4042 (D.N.J. 1993).  Our success in these cases led to RealNetworks hiring us in Lieschke v. RealNetworks, Inc., 2000 WL 198424 (N.D. Ill. 2000), where we defeated an alleged privacy class action based on an arbitration clause found in RealNetworks’ Licensing Agreement with its customers.
• Mr. Dougherty believes that lawyers should endeavor to undertake pro bono work.  After obtaining and defending a Rule 11 sanction award for Commonwealth Edison against a class action plaintiff’s attorney, see Wielgos v. Commonwealth Edison Company, 127 F.R.D. 135 (N.D. Ill. 1989), we were appointed by that same trial judge to represent a group of former City of Chicago employees who believed that the City was not honoring their rights to preferential rehiring under a settlement consent decree.  Three trials and numerous contested proceedings resulted in the employees obtaining judgments valued in excess of $3 million, including jobs with the City for each claimant who wanted to return to employment.