After the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that had previously been litigated and heard on appeal by the Illinois Fourth District Court of Appeals, a local business owner turned to BRE to ensure that it prevailed in front of our State's highest court. BRE successfully accomplished this mission and, in so doing, established new precedent that is favorable to all Illinois businesses, business owners and corporate officers and directors. The case, Andrews, et al. v. Kowa Printing Corp., et al., 217 Ill.2d 101, 838 N.E.2d 894, 298 Ill.Dec. 1 (2005), involved numerous novel and complex issues and provisions of the Illinois Wage Pay and Collection Act that had yet to be passed on by the High Court.

Andrews is now a seminal case under the Wage Act that, among other things, clarifies that corporate officers of defunct Illinois corporations cannot be held liable for unpaid wages when they were not in control of the corporation at the time the payments came due. The case also gave the Illinois Supreme Court the opportunity to establish, for the first time, when a joint-venture relationship will be deemed to exist for purposes of imposing liability under the Wage Act. The ultimate result of the Andrews decision is that it provides significant protection to Illinois corporate officers and clarifies, for the first, certain provisions of the Wage Act.