From Ward v. Kutak Rock, LLP, decided Wednesday by the Appellate Court of Illinois (Justice Eileen O'Neill Burke, joined by Justices Margaret Santon-McBride and Jesse Reyes):
Plaintiff's amended complaint, which is at issue in this appeal, alleged that MacKelvie was an employee of Kutak Rock with "of counsel" status. In February 2021, plaintiff retained Kutak Rock and MacKelvie to represent her in an appellate probate matter. The parties had a contingency fee agreement under which MacKelvie's "hourly fee would be taken from any amount recovered by" him, and "no amount would be due or owing until and unless there was a recovery of money in the probate case."
However, the firm sent several bills to plaintiff, which she indicated that she could not pay, and MacKelvie responded that "there were other ways to pay for his services." MacKelvie then began a series of communications with plaintiff in which he said that he would only work on the appellate brief if plaintiff sent him naked photographs of herself. Plaintiff "felt pressure to send the naked photos of herself to [MacKelvie] as she needed the legal work to be completed in [a] timely fashion." In December 2021, MacKelvie demanded that plaintiff have sex with him at a hotel in Deerfield and said that he would not work on plaintiff's case if she refused. Plaintiff alleged that MacKelvie forced her to have sex with him and "engaged in unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact with [her] that amounted to assault and battery," which caused her to develop depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Plaintiff sued McKelvie personally and also Kutak Rock, on a "negligent supervision" theory:
