The Patterson Law Firm, LLC

The Patterson Law Firm, LLC, consists of trial lawyers for businesses, professionals, and entrepreneurs. Including our managing partner, Michael Haeberle, our top six lawyers have spent more than 212 years combined winning business lawsuits. We offer this unique experience in an eighteen-lawyer boutique. Our attorneys include a PTA mom and special needs child advocate, a hockey coach, law clerks to judges, and authors of books and articles. Chief among the publications is our 600-page book on handling business emergencies, which focuses on temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions in business lawsuits. Originally published by the American Bar Association in 2009, it was updated in 2021 in a second edition, requested by the ABA.

In 2009, the American Bar Association published Tom Patterson’s book on business emergencies. It was updated for a second edition published with Michael Haeberle in 2021.

Because of our experience with emergency actions and legal malpractice cases—two of the most difficult areas of law practice--we often accept complex matters that don’t fit into easy categories. Nevertheless, most of our experience is concentrated in these areas:

1. Association disputes. Homeowners, condominium owners, and cooperatives need associations to govern themselves, but disputes often erupt between owners and the Association, owners and certain officers, or between the owners themselves. In one case, dissident homeowners sued the association’s president, our client, claiming wrongdoing. And they did so in a manner to try to deny him the protection of the association’s insurance policy, purchased to defend and indemnify him and other directors for serving in a volunteer capacity. After over one year of litigation, our client was exonerated, and we managed to get the insurance company to foot the bill. In another case, after a three-week trial, we forced a not-for-profit corporation to dissolve because it was mistreating our group of ten cooperative owners. In both cases, our opponents outspent us three to one.
2. Banking. Fraudulent transactions pilfering consumer bank accounts.
3. Breach of contract. While the elements of a breach of contract are simple, the variety of contracts is not, and the defenses are varied. We represented one of House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s victims who claimed that Hastert broke his oral promise to pay him compensation for molesting him when he was a child. We successfully defended David Paul in a case filed by Chemical Bank of New York claiming that he owed $8 million on a guaranty. We have a treasure trove of jury instructions, briefs, and motions in limine relevant to breach of contract claims, giving us a head start confronting the issues.
4. Business divorces (shareholder, LLC-member, and partnership disputes). What happens when one shareholder, partner or LLC-member secretly competes with the business, excludes another from the benefits of the business? The Illinois Business Corporation Act (BCA), the Illinois Partnership Act, and the Illinois LLC Act provide remedies for this and many other varieties of misconduct. Remedies include removal from the business, appointing a receiver to manage it under the supervision of the court, dissolution, money damages, or a forced buyout of one at the “fair” value (not necessarily the market value). Typically these cases involve the analysis of the relevant statutes, the governing documents of the business, and the financial books and records. In one case, two brothers were 50/50 interest holders, couldn’t get along, and one brother locked our client out of the business, spent money neither he nor the business had, and offered a low price for a buyout. During the litigation, the script was flipped, and our client bought out his brother and made a good profit.
5. Construction disputes. Owners, architects, construction managers, general contractors, subcontractors, and their insurers can be sued when things go wrong on a construction project.Claims of cost overruns and extra work orders; defective work; delay claims; defective work; and mechanics liens are among the disputes we have handled. In one case, we got the contract to admit he lied, a true Perry Mason moment.
6. Cryptocurrency and blockchain litigation and arbitration.
7. Data Privacy and cybersecurity practice.
8. Employment, commission, and brokerage claims.
9. Infringement of patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
10. Insurance coverage. We represent policy holders on insurance and contractual indemnity issues. The key component of a successful resolution of a business issue can depend on establishing insurance coverage. In one case, obtaining insurance coverage enabled us to settle a massive series of lawsuits against directors and officers of a hospital. See, Yessenow v. Executive Risk Idem, Inc., 953 N.E.2d 433 (1st Dist. 2011). In another case, the policyholder lost a coverage jury trial while represented by another lawyer; we stepped in, won a motion for a new trial, and then won the second trial, establishing insurance coverage for a fire that had destroyed a business. We have experience with CGL, E&O, D&O, and SIR insurance policies; counseling on whether to tender defenses; cases that include bad faith claims, indemnity contract disputes, and other risk-shifting contract provisions; and excess insurance matters.
11. Legal and accounting malpractice actions for plaintiffs. This is one of the largest areas of our practice, and we may be the largest law firm in Chicago, and maybe the Midwest, handling such cases. We obtained the largest legal malpractice verdict in the state of Ohio ($32.3 million). Gogo hired us to sue a major law firm that had mishandled its patent portfolio.These cases are complex because you often have to win two cases in one (the case within the case doctrine) and because sophisticated lawyers are the opponent.
12. Personal injury.
13. Professional regulation.
14. Real estate litigation. We represent developers, commercial lessees, and commercial landlords in their disputes with each other. (We generally do not accept cases involving the eviction of individuals.) In one case, a commercial developer of an office building sued our client, the general contractor, for millions, but we defeated this at trial and won our counterclaim so that he had to pay us.In another case, a commercial lessee hired us to defend it from a landlord’s claim that it owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in reimbursement for expenditures that we showed were not owed under the lease.
15. Securities and financial malpractice.

Matters we do not handle. Matters we refer to other lawyers include bankruptcy, capital market transactions, criminal law, eviction of individuals, family law, initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, patent prosecutions, and tax. We strive to be the best at what we do rather than to try to do everything.