Lawsuit

July 16, 2026

The New Wave of Deepfake Fraud Is Coming for Small Businesses

The call comes in on a Tuesday afternoon.

It sounds exactly like your business partner. Or your CFO. Or the vendor you have worked with for six years. The voice has the same cadence, the same phrasing, the same slight accent you have always recognized. Maybe there is a video call and the face matches too.

There is an urgent wire transfer. A confidential acquisition. A vendor payment that needs to go out before end of business. The request is unusual but the person making it is someone you know, someone you trust, someone you would wire money for without a second thought.

July 13, 2026

Your Employees Are Uploading Company Secrets to ChatGPT. What Happens If They Do?

by George Bellas

Your employee is not trying to steal anything.

They are trying to finish a task faster. They paste your pricing model into ChatGPT to reformat it as a client proposal. They upload a draft contract and ask the AI to clean up the language. They feed your source code into the prompt to find a bug. They summarize a confidential internal investigation report to save time writing it up.

None of this feels like a security incident. It feels like using a tool.

July 9, 2026

The Supreme Court Just Made Reverse Discrimination Claims Easier to File. What Illinois Employers Need to Know

by George Bellas

If your promotion process, your DEI initiative, or your last round of layoffs has ever been shaped around demographic targets, the ground under your feet just shifted. On June 5, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in *Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services* that majority group employees do not have to clear a higher legal bar to sue for discrimination than anyone else. That sentence sounds technical. It is not. It is a direct warning to every Illinois employer who has treated “reverse discrimination” claims as the rare, hard to prove exception.

Here is what changed, why it matters more in Illinois than most employers realize, and what to do about it before a claim lands on your desk.

The Case In Plain English

July 6, 2026

AI Is Writing Legal Filings. Some of Them Are Completely Made Up. Here Is What That Means for Your Business

by George Bellas

There is a number that should stop you cold.

As of June 9, 2026, researchers have documented 1,598 court proceedings worldwide in which AI-generated content, fabricated case citations, invented statutes, false quotes from real judgments, was submitted to a court. Of those cases, 496 involved licensed attorneys. The number is growing at roughly 8 new cases per day.

US courts imposed over $145,000 in AI-filing penalties in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

April 23, 2026

The #1 Reason Businesses Get Sued in Illinois Right Now (And How to Avoid It)

by George Bellas

Most business owners assume lawsuits come from major failures.

They don’t.

They come from small, preventable breakdowns that escalate.

August 13, 2024

Illinois BIPA Amendment Changes the Litigation Landscape

by George Bellas

BIPA Amendment Making Waves in Litigation Trends

The landscape of biometric privacy in Illinois is poised for a significant shift following the recent amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). On August 4, 2024, Governor JB Pritzker signed S.B. 2979 into law introducing a crucial modification that could have far-reaching implications for businesses and the ongoing wave of biometric privacy litigation.

Understanding BIPA: A Background

May 31, 2024

BIPA Amended to Limit Damages

by George Bellas

Lawmakers Amend BIPA

When a class action lawsuit against the fast food chain White Castle teed up what could have been a $17 billion dollar verdict the Illinois Supreme Court decided to “respectfully suggest” that the state legislature revisit and clarify certain provisions of the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) of 2008.

That act, as originally written, held that employers who did not obtain employees’ permission when using their fingerprints or other biometric information like face scans in the course of their jobs—or who overlooked the same step if collecting similar information from customers—would be on the hook for $1,000 per “negligent” violation or $5,000 per “reckless” or “intentional” violation. For example, if a fingerprint ID system was used to sign in/out at work, each sign-in and each sign-in was a separate violation which could cost the employer $1,000 each time an employee signed in or signed out.

March 21, 2024

Real Estate Brokers’ Commissions Upended by Recent Settlement

by George Bellas

Antitrust Lawsuit
National Association of Realtors

Decades-old norms regarding Realtor commissions and other policies surrounding home buying and selling have been swept away by the March 15 court settlement between the National Association of Realtors and groups of homeowners who filed suit against the realtors’ group arguing that home buyers should pay their agents’ commissions directly and – most significantly – be able to negotiate that fee.

As a result of the settlement – which is still subject to the approval of the judge overseeing the case – the standard 6% commission on a home sale, heretofore split between the buyers’ and sellers’ agent, will be replaced with a system whereby prospective buyers can shop around for a lower rate and brokers can advertise those rates, even charging flat fees if they wish.

August 12, 2022

If the Alex Jones Text Fiasco was in Illinois?

by George Bellas

Texts can be held against you in court.

Alex Jones lawyers (perhaps inadvertently) turned 2-years of texts to the lawyers for the Sandy Hook families. What would be the repercussions for the disclosure if the trial were in Illinois?

The parents of a 6-year-old child that was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting had requested in discovery that Alex Jones turn over all the emails that related to shooting. Jones previously testified that he had searched his phone for texts about the Sandy Hook School shooting and found none, but Jones’s lawyers proved otherwise.

December 13, 2020

Text Messaging Approved for Illinois Courts

by Bellas & Wachowski - Attorneys at Law

December 9.

The Illinois Supreme Court approved a new rule which authorizes any Illinois court to develop and use a text message notification system.

Amended Rule 14 is effective immediately and the full text of the rule can be viewed here.