Page 8 - John Hundley 2019

Court Outlines Prerequisites For Business Record Admission

Circumstances surrounding the making of a business record, including issues as to the lack of
personal knowledge of its creator, go to the weight of the evidence rather than to its admissibility, a panel
of the Appellate Court in Chicago has ruled.

Moreover, records made by a third party may be admissible as business records so long as the person
authenticating the records was either their custodian or other person familiar with the business and its
mode of operations, said the panel in Union Tank Car Co. v. NuDevco Ptnrs. Holdings, LLC, 2019 IL App
(1st) 172858.

In NuDevco, defendant objected to admission of invoices sent to the plaintiff by third-party suppliers of
the plaintiff. For foundation, plaintiff offered testimony of its employees as to the receipt, processing and
storage of the invoices, but no testimony of the third-party service providers.

“The fact that there was no testimony regarding how the invoices were generated does not compel a
conclusion that no reasonable person would find the foundational requirements for the business records
exception satisfied,” the panel said. “This is particularly true since Union Tank relied on these invoices to
make payments to third parties.”
Court Clarifies “Unclean Hands” Doctrine

If is insufficient simply to list a bunch of bad things done by the plaintiff in alleging that he or she
approaches the court with “unclean hands,” according to a panel of the Appellate Court in Chicago.
According to Munroe-Diamond v. Munroe, 2018 IL App (1st) 172966, “a nexus must exist between the
wrongdoing and the relief sought in court.” In other words, it said, “the plaintiff’s wrongdoing comprising
the unclean-hands defense must be directly related to the plaintiff’s request for relief in the case before
the court.”

In Munroe, the panel affirmed striking of an unclean-hands affirmative defense (but saved part of its
allegations under another doctrine) where the plaintiff’s alleged misdeeds were not related to its request to
the court for mandamus relief.

Court Voids Judgment Based On Defective Summons

A summons addressed to “Queen’s Park” was insufficient to confer jurisdiction over Queen’s Park
Oval Asset Holding Trust, a panel of the Appellate Court in Chicago has held.

Acting in Studentowicz v. Queen’s Park Oval Asset Holding Trust, 2019 IL App (1st) 181182, the panel
said neither actual knowledge nor equitable considerations nor correct naming in the complaint would give
life to the defective summons. The court further said the error was not a “technical error in format”, so the
recent addition of 735 ILCS 5/2-201(c) concerning such errors in summonses would not change the result.

A default judgment for the plaintiff was vacated.
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