The much-talked-about Blount case

Blount v. Stroud is the subject of at least three recent commentaries, one of which focuses on the Illinois Supreme Court ruling in the 2009 case, the other two on the appellate court ruling that upheld the jury's punitive-damages award. In the latest ISBA Labor and Employment Law newsletter, Mike Lied writes about the supreme court opinion, which established that common-law tort and federal anti-discrimination claims aren't preempted by the Illinois Human Rights Act. And Megan A. Drefchinski wrote in the same newsletter about the first district ruling upholding the hefty ($2.8 million) punitive-damages award. Steven R. Merican also focuses on the punitive-damages aspect in a post to his Illinois Appellate Lawyer blog. According to Merican, the case stands for the proposition that "to get a reversal, an appellant must show by a manifest weight of the evidence that a punitive damages verdict was the result of passion, partiality, or corruption."