Carter & Grimsley v. Omni Trading, Inc.
Illinois Appellate Court
716 N.E.2d 320 (1999)
- Written by Douglas Halasz, JD
Facts
Omni Trading, Inc. (Omni) (defendant) bought grain from Country Grain, which Omni paid for using two checks totaling $75,000. Country Grain indorsed the checks to Carter & Grimsley (Carter) (plaintiff) as a retainer for future legal services. Carter deposited the checks. The next day, Country Grain went out of business. Accordingly, Omni stopped the payments on the checks. Carter sued Omni and a state-government official because the government had a statutory lien in Country Grain’s assets and argued that Carter was entitled to the proceeds of the checks plus prejudgment interest as a holder in due course. The government also claimed that it was entitled to the proceeds of the checks. Carter and the government both moved for summary judgment. Carter did not present any evidence to show that Carter performed any legal services for Country Grain before Carter received the checks. The trial court ruled in the government’s favor. Carter appealed and argued that executory contracts for future legal services should be treated differently from other executory contracts.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Lytton, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 812,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
