Jordan M. Tank

Lipe Lyons negotiated a very favorable settlement for its client, an insurer, in a first-party insurance coverage dispute in which the plaintiff alleged the insurer breached the contract of insurance and acted in bad faith when it denied the plaintiff's claim for over $2 million in damages to commercial property. After conducting considerable discovery on the coverage issues raised in the pleadings, the parties settled for significantly less than the plaintiff's initial demand.

Jordan Tank was retained by an insurer to help it resolve worldwide litigation arising out of the June 2017 high-rise fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in London. The fire caused 72 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and allegedly up to £1 billion in property damage. A public inquiry has been underway in London since September 2017. Some claimants filed suit in Pennsylvania, but the court transferred the cases to England under forum non conveniens, and now all cases are pending in London under English law.

Lipe Lyons defended the medical services provider and its staff against the lawsuit filed following the highly publicized death of Edward Robinson, III while in custody at Lake County Jail. The case successfully resolved on the eve of trial.

In this highly publicized lawsuit, Lipe Lyons was retained to represent the security company and security guard on duty the night that Kenneka Jenkins was found dead inside a latched freezer of the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, after attending a party there. The case successfully resolved shortly before trial.

The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed summary judgment for Lipe Lyon’s client, GKN, in a lawsuit arising out of a car accident that caused one death, quadriplegia in a second man, and catastrophic injuries to three others. GKN hired inspectors to perform OSHA-required annual inspections of overhead cranes in its facility. Two inspectors were driving to the facility in the morning when they entered a controlled intersection without stopping, causing the accident. The plaintiffs argued the inspectors were acting as agents of GKN at the time. GKN countered that it did not exercise control over the inspectors’ drive to its facility, and that the other factors courts consider when evaluating agency weighed in GKN’s favor. Both the trial court and Appellate Court agreed, dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims against GKN with prejudice.

Lipe Lyons obtained a very favorable result following a nearly three-week trial in a product liability lawsuit involving an industrial drilling machine. The plaintiff’s leg was traumatically amputated below the knee and she asked the jury to award her over $31 million in damages. Peddinghaus Corporation, the only defendant, was assessed damages totaling just $267,774.25.
 
Peddinghaus designed and installed an industrial drilling machine at PKM Steel in Salina, Kansas. Plaintiff was operating the machine when her lower left leg was crushed and traumatically amputated by a 27-foot steel angle that exited the machine. She argued the machine was unreasonably dangerous because its safety devices were not installed where they were shown on the installation plans, leaving the area where she was standing at the time of the accident unguarded. After the accident her employer, PKM Steel, moved the safety devices to that location. She further argued Peddinghaus knew she had to work in the area where steel exited the machine because its design required her to walk through the area to perform daily maintenance. She claimed Peddinghaus employees had expressed concern about work in that area yet failed to guard it. She also argued Peddinghaus failed to provide adequate warnings because the machine did not have a flashing light or audible signal that indicated steel was about to exit the machine.
 
We argued the machine was appropriately guarded and Plaintiff did not need to stand where she was at the time of the accident to do her job. It could not install the safety devices where they were shown on the installation plans because an electric box was in the way. To the extent that additional guarding was needed, PKM Steel had to provide the guarding as the integrator of the manufacturing system. We further argued that Plaintiff was the only person to be injured by the machine during its 11 years of operation. She was a trained operator and knew or should have known not to stand where steel exited the machine while it was running. The warnings on the machine and in the instruction manual told Plaintiff not to stand where she was at the time of the accident. Lastly, we argued that PKM Steel pressured Plaintiff to work unsafely in order to meet production goals.
 
The jury returned a gross verdict of $5,355,485 but allocated just 5% of the fault to Peddinghaus. It allocated 45% of the fault to Plaintiff and the remaining 50% to PKM Steel.

Shortly before trial, Jordan was hired to defend JB Hunt Transport and its driver in a lawsuit arising out of an intersection accident in which the parties disputed who had the green light. Plaintiff claimed substantial neck and back injuries and more than $3.6 million in special damages. The case settled for less than half of Plaintiff's claimed economic damages after several days of trial.

Jordan defended JB Hunt Transport, Inc. against numerous lawsuits filed in Missouri following a 47-car pileup that occurred when a sudden whiteout reduced visibility to near zero on a busy highway. The lawsuits included wrongful death claims, catastrophic personal injuries, including paralysis, and several alleged traumatic brain injuries.

Jordan Tank and Josh Yonke negotiated a nominal settlement for their client that resolved a spoliation of evidence claim made in a suit which arose out of a series of 10 explosions that occurred in Westmont in November 2017. A Speedway gas station leaked 10,000 gallons of gasoline into the surrounding sewer system, which ultimately led to the explosions occurring in and around nearby residential buildings and along the sewer lines. Lipe Lyons’ client was hired to shore up an apartment building that was damaged when one of the explosions occurred in its basement. Speedway alleged the shoring work destroyed evidence and Lipe Lyons countered that the work actually preserved evidence by stabilizing the damaged building. The settlement was made directly with the plaintiff who filed suit against Speedway. The court approved the settlement, terminating Speedway’s spoliation claim and any other claims that could have been brought against the firm’s client.

Lipe Lyons is currently one of the firms defending Tyson Foods and Keystone Foods against billion-dollar antitrust, RICO, and state tort claims alleging output reduction and index manipulation which have been brought by three classes and more than one hundred and fifty direct action plaintiffs in the In re Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Jordan Tank and Alejandra Barcenas sought declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of their client, Midwest Integrated Companies, LLC, which collects and recycles railroad ties for use as environmentally-friendly fuel in power plants. Midwest transported the fuel over the road under a special oversize/overweight permit issued by Minnesota. When the Minnesota Department of Transportation and Minnesota State Patrol unexpectedly decided that Midwest’s permit did not allow it to transport the fuel, their interpretation threatened both Midwest’s business and a critical source of fuel for Minnesota’s power plants. After Lipe Lyons filed suit and an accompanying memorandum explaining how the new interpretation was contrary to the statutory authority and legislative intent, Minnesota’s Attorney General quickly agreed to resolve the issue outside of court, and Midwest was able to resume supplying power plants with the fuel they need.

Lipe Lyons obtained dismissal with prejudice of a legal malpractice claim against a family law attorney and his law firm. The plaintiff, a former client, alleged that her attorneys failed to secure a sufficient amount of maintenance payments and properly categorize marital and non-marital assets, forcing her to settle for less than she was entitled to. The trial court first found that her claims for maintenance payments were barred by the statute of limitations, and gave the plaintiff leave to amend her complaint. After the amendment, the trial court dismissed the claims arising out of the categorization of marital property with prejudice because the plaintiff agreed in the settlement documents that the amount of the settlement was fair and reasonable, and it was speculative to assume she could have settled for more if the defendants had categorized her non-marital property differently.

Lipe Lyons is currently one of the firms defending RelayHealth against treble-damages class action alleging a conspiracy to monopolize the market for electronic prescribing.

Jordan Tank and Krista Krepp obtained summary judgment for a property owner in a premises liability lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who claimed she incurred nearly $250,000 in special damages after tripping over uneven asphalt in a parking lot that was being repaved. The trial court agreed that the owner did not know about the allegedly dangerous condition or have control over the contractors performing the repaving work. The trial court made the summary judgment order final and appealable, and the plaintiff chose not to seek appellate review within 30 days, ending the litigation for the owner.

In a commercial eviction/business dispute, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Lipe Lyons' client after less than 10 minutes of deliberations. The plaintiff landlord sought eviction of its tenant. The defendant alleged the plaintiff sought eviction to retaliate against it and to shut down its business because it was competing with another business that an owner of the plaintiff started operating next to it just six weeks before the plaintiff filed suit. After the tenant signed the lease at issue, it helped the plaintiff develop the business that started just six weeks before the suit was filed, with the expectation that it would be allowed to operate the business once it opened to the public. However, the plaintiff's owner decided he would rather have the defendant remain where it is currently located and pay rent while he started another company to operate the compost facility and receive the revenue it generated. Internal correspondence and documents created by the plaintiff and its agents showed that they knew the defendant had a right under the lease to relocate its business and operate the compost facility. When the compost facility started operating, the defendant sent correspondence to the plaintiff stating that it had breached the lease. One month later, the plaintiff filed its lawsuit seeking eviction. After a week of trial, the jury found in favor of the defendant.

Lipe Lyons obtained summary judgment, and the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed, for a law firm and its attorney in a legal malpractice claim involving numerous liaiblity and damages issues. The plaintiff filed suit against his former attorneys alleging they failed to exercise reasonable care in relation to a divorce trial. The plaintiff claimed the defendants were negligent in not offering medical testimony regarding the former spouse’s medical condition that prevented her from working, and economic testimony regarding the coal industry and the plaintiff's alleged inability to secure employment as an engineer who specialized in the construction of coal-fired powerplants. The plaintiff also made several complicated arguments regarding his damages and the way that defendants' alleged negligence impacted how much he had to pay his former spouse. After three years of discovery, the Illinois Appellate Court agreed with the trial court that there was no question of fact that the plaintiff could not meet his burden of proof on any of his claims.

Renato Velasquez was driving a flatbed truck when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into several vehicles that were stopped by the side of the road. The accident killed a tollway worker, set a police car on fire with the officer inside, causing burns to nearly half of his body, and injured another truck driver. All three filed lawsuits (which were consolidated) against Velasquez, his employer, and CRST, the broker that arranged for the shipment that Velasquez was making at the time of the accident. Lipe Lyons attorneys represented CRST and argued that it was not liable because Velasquez was not acting as its agent at the time of the accident. The plaintiffs demanded $55 million to settle. Shortly before trial all three cases settled for less than half of the plaintiffs’ initial demands.

Defended a municipality and its police officers against a civil rights class action lawsuit that arose out of the police department’s alleged policy of conducting unreasonable searches and seizures for over 25 years.

Defended an insurance company and its insureds against five bellwether breach of contract lawsuits that arose out of the insurer’s alleged failure to properly pay fees and interest to a medical provider for services it rendered to employees of the insureds.

Prosecuted a hard fraud lawsuit against individuals involved in organized crime ring who filed fraudulent personal injury and property damage claims which arose out of orchestrated “crash for cash” motor vehicle accidents. Worked with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI to investigate the members of the crime ring and show the connections between the illegal and the legal aspects of the conspiracy to defraud insurers. Once subpoenas for depositions were issued to the leaders of the conspiracy, the personal injury lawsuits were voluntarily dismissed.

Defended a general contractor against a breach of contract, breach of warranty, and negligence lawsuit that arose out of the allegedly defective construction of one of the largest upper-tier outdoor shopping malls in the United States.

Defended a masonry subcontractor against a breach of contract and breach of implied warranty lawsuit that arose out of allegedly defective structural masonry that caused the roof of a church to cave in and damage rare manuscripts.

Jordan Tank defended a general contractor that was overseeing a road construction project against a lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who was rendered a paraplegic when his personal vehicle allegedly struck an unbarricaded cut-out in the roadway and drove into a light pole. At the time of the accident, Plaintiff and two of his friends were driving from a house party to a party store. The driver of the vehicle was impaired by intoxication well beyond the legal limit. After a week of trial, the parties settled for a fraction of Plaintiff's initial settlement demand. 

The plaintiff was an electrician who was severely injured when an electrical breaker he was working on arc-flashed and exploded. Gilbane, the defendant represented by Lipe Lyons attorneys, was the general contractor overseeing the work of the plaintiff’s employer. The plaintiff made a global settlement demand of $17.5 million to settle and right before the hearing on the defendants’ motions for summary judgment the co-defendants settled for over $3 million, leaving Gilbane as the sole defendant. However, the trial court granted Gilbane summary judgment and the First District affirmed, finding no question of fact that Gilbane was not liable under Section 414. The First District assumed that Gilbane had a legal duty due to evidence of control it retained over the plaintiff’s employer but found that it acted reasonably by fulfilling its contractual safety responsibilities. The First District further found that Gilbane did not have notice of the allegedly dangerous work practice that allegedly caused the plaintiff’s injuries. In October 2017 the Illinois Supreme Court denied the plaintiff’s petition for leave to appeal, ending the case.

Defended a repair shop against numerous consolidated lawsuits that arose out of a motor coach rollover accident in Arkansas that killed or seriously injured the bus’s driver and 28 passengers. The bus veered off of the highway while traveling between 60 and 70 miles per hour, fishtailed, and then rolled over one and a half times. The bus's roof ripped off and multiple passengers were ejected. The driver and 14 passengers died in the accident, and the other 14 remaining passengers were seriously injured. Several years before the accident, the bus had been stored in a warehouse that caught fire. The plaintiffs alleged the bus' structural integrity was weakened in the fire, and the repair shop failed to remedy the issue. Additionally, the plaintiffs alleged that the repair shop welded steel panels to the top of the bus that made it top-heavy and more prone to roll over. The repair shop argued that it repaired the bus in accordance with the instructions it was given by the insurance company that funded the repairs, and that the panels welded to the top of the bus did not weigh enough to raise its center of gravity. Before trial, the repair shop settled for a small fraction of the total amount paid by the other 12 defendants 

Defended a trucking company and its driver against a lawsuit that arose out of a rear-end motor vehicle collision on the freeway between a tractor-trailer and personal vehicle which resulted in catastrophic injuries to the driver of the personal vehicle, including paraplegia. Neither the plaintiff nor the driver of the tractor-trailer remembered the accident. After substantial fact discovery into the potential causes of the accident, the case settled for less than eight figures.

Defended a not-for-profit daycare against lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenage girl with mental and physical disabilities and a history of seizures and strokes who fell from a chair and struck a portion of her head without a skull on the ground, which allegedly resulted in her death six years later after her awareness and responsiveness slowly declined to a vegetative state.

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the trial court’s order granting a psychologist summary judgment on the plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference claim. The plaintiff was the estate of an underage prisoner with a history of mental illness and suicide attempts who committed suicide in a juvenile detention facility. The Seventh Circuit and trial court found no question of fact that the psychologist was not deliberately indifferent to the decedent’s medical needs.

Acted as local counsel for an international retailer in product liability lawsuits that arose out of its sale of gas cans which were allegedly prone to catching fire and exploding because they lacked flame arresters.

Defended a North American distributor of industrial machinery against a product liability lawsuit that arose out of amputation injury to the operator of a production saw system. Plaintiff's primary theory of liability against the distributor was that it failed to properly train Plaintiff how to operate the saw system. The court granted several successive motions to dismiss arguing that Plaintiff's theory was educational malpractice and therefore barred under Illinois law before ultimately dismissing the claims against the distributor with prejudice.

Plaintiff, a carpenter, was setting 4,800 pound concrete retention walls when one of the walls collapsed onto him, crushing his cervical and lumbar spine, both hips, a rib, a lung, and causing other injuries. Jeff Lipe and Jordan Tank represented RM Chin, a construction management firm that provided resident engineers to observe the work of Doherty’s employer and make sure the work complied with the plans and specifications. During discovery Lipe Lyons attorneys took the lead on depositions to show that the employer was solely responsible for Doherty’s safety. Even though Plaintiffs’ attorneys targeted RM Chin with their own questions, when fact discovery was over Plaintiffs settled directly with Doherty’s employer and voluntarily dismissed their claims against RM Chin.

Troy was driving one of Hussmann’s commercial vehicles when he rear-ended a line of stopped vehicles at 57 mph during morning rush hour. Troy’s vehicle struck Aaron Swenson’s vehicle, pushing it forward into Joseph LeSanche’s vehicle. Good Samaritans tried to resuscitate Swenson but were unable; he died at the scene. One of the Good Samaritans called Aaron Swenson’s wife, who had just found out that she was pregnant and overheard the resuscitation efforts. She miscarried four weeks later and filed suit for the wrongful death of her husband and unborn child. LeSanche filed suit for his own personal injuries and the cases were consolidated. Troy was charged with multiple counts of driving under the influence and he entered a plea of not guilty. At trial, the plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages. Hussmann admitted that it was vicariously liable for Troy’s negligence, and both of the defendants admitted that Troy’s negligence caused Aaron Swenson’s death and LeSanche’s personal injuries. However, Troy and Hussmann denied that Troy’s conduct was willful and wanton and that the plaintiffs were entitled to punitive damages. Before trial the plaintiffs demanded $26 million to settle. During the two week trial Troy invoked the Fifth Amendment and the plaintiffs were not allowed to call him to testify as an adverse witness, but the jury was instructed that it could draw an adverse inference from his silence. After the trial the jury awarded Swenson $22.7 million and LeSanche $12.4 million but the trial court remitted the verdicts to $12.7 million and $7.4 million after granting the defendants’ post-trial motion, which argued that numerous evidentiary and instructional errors caused the jury to award excessive verdicts based on sympathy. The defendants then settled with Swenson for less than the remitted amount of the verdict, and appealed the LeSanche verdict.

The First District affirmed the trial court’s order granting the defendant summary judgment on the plaintiff’s negligence claim. The plaintiff slipped and fell on snow and ice, and the trial court and First District found no question of fact that the claim was barred by the Snow and Ice Removal Act.

Trial counsel for a crane company in a wrongful death lawsuit arising out of an accident that occurred during the erection of a tower crane in downtown Chicago. On the day of the accident, several ironworkers, and employee of the crane company, and an employee of the general contractor were assembling a 264-foot tower crane for the construction of a luxury condominium tower. For an unknown reason, the ironworker foreman inserted his body into a pinch point without telling anyone else where he was or what he was doing. A 25,000 pound piece of equipment then lowered onto his body, crushing his chest and transecting his aorta. The crane company admitted fault but contested causation. The general contractor denied fault. After a month-long trial, and Plaintiff’s request during closing argument for more than $90 million in damages, the jury returned a verdict $11 million, which was reduced to $10,175,000 due to the decedent’s contributory fault. The amount paid to Plaintiff was considerably less than her last settlement demand, and only slightly more than Defendants’ last offer.

Consolidated wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits arising out of December 2006 hostage situation in Chicago's Ogilvie Transportation Center. During the confrontation, three hostages and the hostage taker were killed, and a fourth hostage was shot and injured. The shooter was a middle-aged truck driver who believed he came up with the idea for a portable toilet that truckers could use while on the road. After a patent attorney told him the idea had aleady been patented, the shooter came to believe the patent attorney stole the idea and profited off it. He went to Ogilvie, where the attorney's office was located, took a security guard hostage, forced his way into the attorney's law firm, and shot the attorney and several co-workers. After several days of trial, Lipe Lyons' client, the owners and managers, settled for a confidential amount. The jury ultimatley found the building's security company was negligent, and awarded the plaintiffs over $33 million in damages.