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ABRA Auto Body Didn't Properly Collect Employee, Customer Fingerprints Says Plaintiff in Class Action Suit by Jonathan Bilyk, Cook County Record
Two more business groups—a chain of auto body repair shops and a group of fitness clubs—have been added to the growing list of shops being sued under an Illinois law governing how businesses are supposed to handle the collection and use of employees’ and customers’ fingerprints and other socalled biometric information. On Sept. 8, attorneys with two Chicago law firms introduced class action lawsuits in Cook County Circuit Court, accusing both ABRA Auto Body & Glass and the operators of the Crunch
Fitness group of gyms, of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Lawyers for the firm of Stephan Zouras LLP, of Chicago, filed suit on behalf of named plaintiff Randy Fields against ABRA. The lawsuit marked the third such lawsuit filed by the Stephan Zouras firm under the Illinois BIPA law in September. On Sept. 5, the firm filed two similar lawsuits in Cook County court against both the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group and the Speedway chain of gas stations and convenience See ABRA Class Action, Page 3
Hurricane Harvey Wreaks Havoc on Houston, Affected Body Shops Report on Damage
Credit: Patch.com
See Shops Affected, Page 22
P.O. BOX 1516, CARLSBAD, CA 92018
When Hurricane Harvey hit the Southeast part of Texas during the weekend of August 25–27, many small towns along the coast were utterly devastated
and destroyed. However, the most damage was sustained in Houston due to the city’s large size and denser population. Homes, vehicles and businesses were flooded, and at least 45 Houston lives were lost as Harvey unleashed its fury on the Lone Star State. Harvey hit the Texas coast on the evening of Aug. 25 as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds as high as 130 mph, ravaging the coastline. Houston residents awoke on Sunday to flooding that turned roads into rivers. John Kopriva, President of the Houston Auto Body Association
Change Service Requested
by Chasidy Rae Sisk
An Island in Wrigleyville by Mauricio Peña, Chicago Magazine
Walking through Wrigleyville lately, you’re just as likely to skirt around scaffolding as you are to dodge a drunken fan. The Resendiz family is used to the latter and acclimating to
Jose Luis took over the shop from his father, and his son Greg is now shop manager
the former: They’ve owned and operated Luis’s Auto Repair for more than 50 years and seen plenty of changes to the neighborhood. But the largest, most recent spate of development
VOL. 7 ISSUE 1 OCTOBER 2017
came straight to their shop door, in the form of a Cubs representative. Roughly four years ago, Jose Luis Resendiz remembers, the team official stopped by offering to purchase the property. While the 60-yearold shop owner entertained the idea, nothing ever came of it. “I said yes, but he must have not been serious because he never came back,” Resendiz says with a smile. Luis’s Auto Repair, owned by Jose Luis and managed by his son Greg, has born witness to the neighborhood’s many transformations. Before pubs like Goose Island lined Clark and Addison, Jose Luis remembers laundromats, warehouses selling industrial equipment for restaurants, and other auto body shops that have since vanished. Now, Wrigleyville is undergoing another makeover—more drastic than See An Island, Page 15
Hurricane Harvey Ravaged Cars and Trucks — Bad for Drivers, Good for Automakers by James F. Peltz and David Montero, Los Angeles Times
been busy helping his parents clean out their wind-damaged house along the coast. He said he doubts he’ll get much anyway and is instead hoping for some assistance from the Federal
Perry Smith tried to race Hurricane Harvey. He lost. Now his white Toyota Corolla sits with a broken axle in the parking lot of a Strips convenience store in Rockport, Texas. It is, he admits, probably the end of the road for his trusty car with almost 190,000 miles on it. “The hurricane was right on my tail,” Smith said. “It Harvey created epic flooding throughout Houston and caught me. It lifted the back southeast Texas. Credit: Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles Times of the car up and I was looking down at the road through my Emergency Management Agency. Still, Texans already have filed windshield. Then—bam—it slammed more than 100,000 storm-related back down and that was it.” claims on their car- and truck-insurSmith, 56, hasn’t filed a claim See Harvey Ravage, Page 26 with his insurance carrier yet; he’s
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