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Goldberg Kohn Litigation Principal David Morrison is quoted in “Biggest Illinois Decisions of 2026: Midyear Report," published in the July 10, 2026, edition of Law360.
The article examines some of the most significant court rulings issued in Illinois during the first half of the year and highlights key judicial developments that should be monitored through the remainder of 2026. One of the biggest decisions to come down in Illinois so far this year applies a two-year-old Biometric Information Privacy Act amendment retroactively in an appellate ruling that will likely deflate settlement values.
Plaintiffs had been advocating for settling BIPA cases using an assumption that every violation constituted at least a $1,000 negligence claim, until the 2024 amendment saying that when companies unlawfully collect or disclose the same biometric identifier from the same person using the same collection method, it counts as only one violation. In April, the Seventh Circuit said that amendment should apply to every BIPA case pending when it took effect because the statutory change was not substantive but merely procedural.
The appellate court's ruling stands to bring substantial clarity to biometric privacy litigation and settlement negotiations because it brings a claim's value significantly further into focus. While the retroactivity ruling applies to a specific set of already-pending BIPA cases, it emphasizes that BIPA violations entitle aggrieved individuals to "at most" one recovery, making even an award of up to $1,000 per person itself discretionary, which will meaningfully affect cases filed well into the future.
David represents companies in single plaintiff, collective action and class actions brought under the FLSA, state minimum wage laws and privacy laws, including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
In the article, David agrees that the retroactivity issues seem largely settled, especially since the state Supreme Court found in Cothron v. White Castle that BIPA's previous iteration entitled plaintiffs to per-violation damages.
The idea that the state's justices would stress the need for a legislative rather than court-based change to BIPA's "catastrophic" damages liability, only to see lawmakers make that change and then decide those same substantial damages should be available to every then-pending case, "doesn't make sense," says Morrison.
"I don't see how the Illinois Supreme Court comes to a different conclusion, but until they do, anything's possible," he continued.
The cases are Reginald Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., case number 25-2185, Brandon Willis v. Universal Intermodal Services Inc. et al., case number 25-2761, and John Gregg v. Central Transport LLC, case number 25-2762, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
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