Robert M. Levine v. Richard Kling

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that, under Illinois law, a plaintiff suing his former criminal defense counsel must prove his own innocence and that a plaintiff is precluded from doing so if the conviction has not been overturned
• applying and predicting Illinois law as requiring proof of actual innocence to state a claim for legal malpractice
• “[B]y operation of the doctrine of collateral estoppel, a valid criminal conviction acts as a bar to overturning that conviction in a civil damages suit.”
• tort law allows damages only for harms to a plaintiffs legally protected interests and the liberty of a guilty criminal is not one of them
• “[B]y operation of the doctrine of collateral estoppel, a valid criminal conviction acts as a bar to overturning that conviction in a civil damages suit.”
• tort law allows damages only for harms to a plaintiff’s legally protected interests, and the liberty of a guilty criminal is not one of them

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).