Justia U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Drivers, employed by the concrete company, were represented by the union and went on strike after their collective bargaining agreement expired. The company announced that it no longer recognized the union as the drivers' representative and contacted the drivers directly to employ them individually on new terms. A few resigned from the union and returned to work. The strike settled and more returned, on terms less favorable than the previous agreement. The union filed charges with the NLRB. The district court issued an injunction under section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 160(j), ordering the company to stop certain unfair labor practices pending a final decision by the NLRB. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The concrete company does not qualify under section 8(f) as an employer engaged primarily in the building and construction industry, that would not be subject to some unfair labor practice restrictions in section 8(a) and would be entitled to withdraw recognition from the union. The court properly found the company's practices to be destructive to the union’s organizational efforts and that the union had established irreparable harm.

In negotiations for architectural services for construction of a hotel, the parties agreed that defendant would pay an additional $15,000, apart from design fees, if defendant elected not to use plaintiff's construction affiliate. The agreement stipulated that architectural designs would remain plaintiff's intellectual property. Defendant did not use plaintiff's construction affiliate and the relationship deteriorated. Plaintiff claimed that it had no further design obligations; defendant refused to pay what $28,000 demanded by plaintiff. Plaintiff accepted an $18,000 payment in satisfaction, but registered a copyright for designs that it had produced and filed copyright infringement claims against defendant. The district court ruled in favor of defendant, holding that plaintiff had not complied with registration requirements (17 U.S.C. 408(b)) when it submitted re-created designs because its office had been robbed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff did not identify anything in the designs that was original and protectable; the designs were, for the most part, based on the Holiday Inn Express prototype.

Suspecting the defendant of drug trafficking, federal agents attached a GPS device to his vehicle while it was parked in a public place. The GPS tracked the defendant from Phoenix to Illinois, where the state police took up live surveillance, stopped the defendant for a traffic violation, searched the vehicle after a canine unit alerted to the presence of drugs, and found nine packages of heroin. The district court refused to suppress the evidence. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The GPS surveillance conducted in this case was not lengthy and did not expose, or risk exposing, the "twists and turns" of the defendant's life. The purpose of the GPS was only to record the trip, so no warrant was required; real-time information from a GPS is exactly the kind of information that drivers make available by traversing public roads.