Stop and Look Before You Listen!

One of the areas in which criminal and matrimonial law collide is in wiretap and eavesdropping laws. Not only are many matrimonial laws state-specific as to statute and judicial interpretation, but the various wiretap and eavesdropping laws throughout the nation are similarly disjointed. For example, while most states and the federal statute do not require the consent of all parties to a conversation, there is still a minority of approximately 12 states that do require all parties to consent. Add to that the constantly changing technology regarding communications, as well as differing definitions as to what constitutes a communication, and the confusion is multiplied.

Virtually all states have some sort of statute involving criminal penalties, as well as possible civil penalties. There is also a question of whether an illegal act is admissible in matrimonial cases. Generally it would seem that if something is obtained in violation of the state's wiretap laws, it would be inadmissible. But this is not always the case. Resorting to your particular state laws is essential. Updating that research is equally essential.

This article does not analyze all ' or even most ' of the states' laws, but focuses on some of the larger states and discusses certain controversial areas.

Illinois

Illinois is perhaps one of the most interesting states because it is in a complete state of transition (translation: confusion). That is because the Illinois statute has recently been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Illinois. In March of this year, the court decided two cases, the more important of which is People v. Clark, 2014 IL 115776. It was a criminal case arising out of a child support matter. It was alleged that the defendant used a device to record a conversation between himself and an attorney without the latter's consent. Count II alleged similar recording, but involving a judge. The defendant claimed he needed the recording to preserve the record of his case in this child support matter. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Illinois' statute on First Amendment grounds, using the overbreadth doctrine, whereby a law may be invalidated as overbroad if a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional. ' 11. The Illinois statute was one of the few “all party statutes” requiring the consent of all parties.

The statute provides in part:

A person commits eavesdropping when he: (1) knowingly and intentionally uses an eavesdropping device for the purpose of hearing or recording all of any part of any conversation or intercepts, retains, or transcribes electronic information unless he does so (A) with the consent of all of the parties to such conversation or electronic communication.

The statute further defines conversation as:

any oral communication between 2 or more persons regardless of whether one or more of the parties intended their communication to be of a private nature under circumstances justifying that expectation.

The court had struck down an earlier version of the law in 1986 in a landmark case, and in 1994, the statute was amended, for the first time defining the term “conversation.” The statute now requires consent of all parties, regardless of whether they intended the conversation to be private.

Prior to 1994:

… [C]onsent of all parties to a conversation to the recording of that conversation was not required in instances where any party lacked an intent to keep the conversation private. The legislature sought to change that in the 1994 amendments by making clear that no recording could be made absent consent from all parties regardless of any lack of expectation of privacy. Thus, the statute now essentially deems all conversations to be private and not subject to recording even if the participants themselves have no expectation of privacy.

' 20.

The court further explained that individuals have a valid interest in the privacy of their communications:

The eavesdropping statute thus legitimately criminalizes audio recordings in these instances. The purpose of the statute to protect private conversations is thus served. However, the statute does not stop there. It criminalizes a whole range of conduct involving the audio recording of conversations that cannot be deemed in any way private. For example, the statute prohibits recording (1) a loud argument on the street; (2) a political debate in a park; (3) the public interactions of police officers with citizens (if done by a member of the general public); and (4) any other conversation loud enough to be overheard by others whether in a private or public setting. None of these examples implicate privacy interests, yet the statute makes it a felony to audio record each one.

' 21.

It was held that the statute's blanket ban on audio recordings swept so broadly that it criminalizes a great deal of wholly innocent conduct. For example, the court reasoned:

[I]f another person overhears what we say, we cannot control with whom that person may repeat what we said. That person may write down what we say and publish it, and this is not a violation of the eavesdropping statute. Yet if that same person records our words with an audio recording device, even if it is not published in any way, a criminal act has been committed. The person taking notes may misquote us or misrepresent what we said, but an audio recording is the best evidence of our words. Yet, the eavesdropping statute bars it. ' Illinois' privacy statute goes too far ' We hold that Section (a)(1)(A) of the eavesdropping statute is overbroad because a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.

' 23.

As a result, Illinois is currently without any protection against eavesdropping. The Illinois Senate has passed a new eavesdropping law, but the House of Representatives adjourned before taking action on an amendment by the Senate. The new bill allows recording of loud public arguments, recordings of police officers carrying out their public duties and other public occurrences. As mentioned, analysis cannot stop there because in Illinois even under the previous wiretap statute, an appellate court in In re Marriage of Karonis , 693 N.E.2d 1282 (Ill.App.1998), held that a guardian ad litem for children was properly allowed to listen to tape recordings, which the wife had secretly made, of the husband's telephone conversations with the children. This was so even though the trial court had entered an order barring the contents of the tapes as evidence.

The court reasoned that in discharging his or her duties, the guardian ad litem will review or consider all kinds of information regarding the child ' both admissible and inadmissible ' at trial. It was held that reviewing the tapes materially advanced the guardian ad litem's ability to determine and defend the child's interest.

New York

New York, on the other hand, is one of the majority of what are sometimes referred to as “one party” states. Penal Law Section 250.05 is New York's state equivalent of the federal wiretap act, prohibiting the use of recordings obtained through eavesdropping where intercepted without the victim's permission. A person who is a party to a conversation or has the consent of one of the parties can lawfully record it or disclose its contents.

In Gurevich v. Gurevich, 886 N.Y.S.2d 558 (N.Y.Sup.Ct. 2009), it was held that the wife did not unlawfully intercept e-mails of the husband, in part because the e-mail was not intercepted when sent, but was stored in the e-mail account. This is so even though the wife admitted she took the e-mails from the husband's account. She contended that he had provided her with his password and had never changed it. The parties had been separated for three years. See In the Matter of Harry R. v. Esther R., 510 N.Y.S.2d 792 (N.Y.Fam.Ct. 1986) (father's recordings of phone conversations with children were not illegal eavesdropping because the conversations were recorded by him as either the sender or receiver of the conversations).

Florida

Florida is an “all parties” state. In O'Brien v. O'Brien, 899 So.2d 1133 (D.C.A.Fla. 2005), the court held that the wife illegally intercepted the husband's e-mails and instant messaging communications with another woman. The Florida Security of Communications Act found in Chapter 934 of the Florida statute was violated. But the case turned on a fine technological point. The wife had installed a particular brand of spyware on the husband's computer that immediately copied and stored the communications. The court indicated that the result might be different if the wife merely accessed communications stored after the fact and not contemporaneously intercepted. A federal case, United States v. Steiger, 318 F.3d 1039 (11th Cir.) cert. denied 538 U.S. 1051 (2003), was distinguished. In Steiger , a virus allowed a hacker access to materials stored on the hard drive. Since this merely copied information, this was not an interception within the meaning of the federal wiretap act, after which the Florida Act was modeled.

It was noted that a loophole in the Florida Act excluded electronic communications and so the court ruled that technically these communications were not excludable under the Act. However, the trial court had excluded them, noting that it was an illegal act in intercepting the communication. It held that the refusal of the trial court to admit them into evidence was not an abuse of discretion.

More recently a Court of Appeals in Florida decided McDade v. Florida, 114 So.3d 465 (D.C.A.Fla. 2013). In that case, a victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather recorded him making certain incriminating statements. The recordings were the primary reason the defendant was convicted of criminal charges. The Court of Appeals in Florida affirmed the conviction, citing a prior case indicating that the prohibition against recording communications without consent only applies where the person has a reasonable explanation of privacy under the circumstances. The majority held that the defendant's expectation of privacy was not reasonable measured against what society is prepared to accept as reasonable.

Although the court affirmed the conviction, it certified for appeal to the Florida Supreme Court the question of whether a recording of solicitation and confirmation of child sexual abuse is a violation of Chapter 934. That appeal was argued in March of this year and the case has been designated as a “high profile case” in Florida. Judge Chris Altenbernd, concurring specially, stated that the defendant had no reasonable expectation that his conversation about the abuse would not be recorded. However, he expressed concern about the Florida statute, indicating that:

In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon began secretly recording conversations in the White House. (citation omitted) When this was discovered, the public was very troubled by the practice. In 1974, with virtually no debate, the legislature amended Florida's statute to require the consent of 'all of the parties' to a conversation. (citation omitted) The 'all party' version of this statute remains a minority view; many states and the federal government continue to require the consent of only a single party. See, e.g. , 18 U.S.C.A. Section 2511(2)(a)(iii)(d)(2012); See generally Carol M. Bast, What's Bugging You? Inconsistency and Irrationalities of the Law of Eavesdropping, 47 DePaul L. Rev . 837 (1998) (surveying state-by-state consent laws).” 114 So.3d at 473. [He concludes by stating,] The huge advances in technology that have affected our society's view of privacy should prompt the legislature to review the 1974 amendment and to decide whether it would now be more prudent to return to a statute comparable to the federal statute and the statute in place in most other states.

Id. at 475.

Judge Craig C. Villanti, concurring in part and dissenting in part, had even larger concerns. Noting that the recorded conversations took place in the defendant's bedroom, he stated:

I cannot concieve of a location where an individual has a greater expectation of privacy than in his or her own bedroom in his or her own house ' an area that has been traditionally presumed to have a heightened right of privacy, not a reduced one. See, e,g., Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (noting that 'a man's home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy') (Harlan, J. concurring); Jardines v. State , 73 So.3d 34, 45 (Fla.2011) (noting that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her home).

Id. at 476.

California

California is another “all parties” state. The California Invasion of Privacy Act, Sections 631 and 632, were enacted in 1967 and replaced prior laws that had permitted conversations to be recorded with the consent of only one party. Additionally, California Family Code Section 2022 states that evidence collected by eavesdropping in violation of that statutory code is inadmissible. Courts in California have interpreted the statute as prohibiting far more than wiretapping. For example, in Ribas v. Clark, 696 P.2d 637 (Cal. 1985), a lawyer listening in on an extension heard a conversation between her client and her client's former spouse. Her client testified to the conversation and subsequently, the former husband sued the lawyer for violation of the Invasion of Privacy Act.

The Supreme Court of California held that the ex-husband stated a claim against his former wife's attorney. The court noted that, “to the extent that the broad language and purposes of the Privacy Act may encompass conduct that some people believe should not be proscribed, their remedy is to ask the legislature to draft a statute they find more palatable.” 38 Cal.3d at 362.

The California Supreme Court had interpreted the statute in Flanagan v. Flanagan, 27 Cal.4th 766 (Cal. 2002). It was held that the statute prohibits recording of a phone call without consent of all parties but only if the call includes a “confidential communication.” That excludes a situation where the parties may reasonably suspect that the communication may be overheard or recorded. Flanagan was a case between a mother and her son. Space does not permit a full description herein, but the facts of this case are fascinating and include the wife's alleged attempt to murder her husband. It further involves her manicurist taping her telephone conversations after that revelation. The wife sued the manicurist and her son and as it turned out, the son's conversations with his father were being taped by his mother and he countersued.

It was held that to prove a violation, the contents of each conversation need not be proved; it suffices if the person had an objectively reasonable expectation that he was not being recorded. It was noted that the legislature had increased the protection of the statute by prohibiting malicious interception of calls from or to cellular or cordless phones and the intentional interception or recording of communications involving a cellular phone or a cordless phone. 27 Cal. 4th at 776.

The court concluded:

Significantly, those statutes protect against interception or recording of any communication. When the Legislature determined that there was no practical means of protecting cordless or cellular phone conversations from accidental eavesdropping, it chose to protect all such conversations from malicious or intentional eavesdropping or recording, rather than protecting only conversations where a party wanted to keep the content secret. ' It would be anomalous to interpret the Privacy Act as protecting all cellular or cordless phone conversations, but only those landline conversations that the parties intended to keep secret ' especially because, as here, many conversations take place between persons using different types of telephones.

Id.

Conclusion

As can be seen there is no “one size fits all” methodology to these cases. The applicable law in the state in question must be checked ' and re-checked.

Paul L. Feinstein, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a Chicago sole practitioner with 34 years of experience. He limits his practice to family law, with emphasis on divorce litigation, consulting, mediation and appeals. He was recently named one of Illinois' Top 100 Lawyers for 2014 by Super Lawyers. For more information, go to paulfeinstein.com.

One of the areas in which criminal and matrimonial law collide is in wiretap and eavesdropping laws. Not only are many matrimonial laws state-specific as to statute and judicial interpretation, but the various wiretap and eavesdropping laws throughout the nation are similarly disjointed. For example, while most states and the federal statute do not require the consent of all parties to a conversation, there is still a minority of approximately 12 states that do require all parties to consent. Add to that the constantly changing technology regarding communications, as well as differing definitions as to what constitutes a communication, and the confusion is multiplied.

Virtually all states have some sort of statute involving criminal penalties, as well as possible civil penalties. There is also a question of whether an illegal act is admissible in matrimonial cases. Generally it would seem that if something is obtained in violation of the state's wiretap laws, it would be inadmissible. But this is not always the case. Resorting to your particular state laws is essential. Updating that research is equally essential.

This article does not analyze all ' or even most ' of the states' laws, but focuses on some of the larger states and discusses certain controversial areas.

Illinois

Illinois is perhaps one of the most interesting states because it is in a complete state of transition (translation: confusion). That is because the Illinois statute has recently been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Illinois. In March of this year, the court decided two cases, the more important of which is People v. Clark , 2014 IL 115776. It was a criminal case arising out of a child support matter. It was alleged that the defendant used a device to record a conversation between himself and an attorney without the latter's consent. Count II alleged similar recording, but involving a judge. The defendant claimed he needed the recording to preserve the record of his case in this child support matter. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Illinois' statute on First Amendment grounds, using the overbreadth doctrine, whereby a law may be invalidated as overbroad if a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional. ' 11. The Illinois statute was one of the few “all party statutes” requiring the consent of all parties.

The statute provides in part:

A person commits eavesdropping when he: (1) knowingly and intentionally uses an eavesdropping device for the purpose of hearing or recording all of any part of any conversation or intercepts, retains, or transcribes electronic information unless he does so (A) with the consent of all of the parties to such conversation or electronic communication.

The statute further defines conversation as:

any oral communication between 2 or more persons regardless of whether one or more of the parties intended their communication to be of a private nature under circumstances justifying that expectation.

The court had struck down an earlier version of the law in 1986 in a landmark case, and in 1994, the statute was amended, for the first time defining the term “conversation.” The statute now requires consent of all parties, regardless of whether they intended the conversation to be private.

Prior to 1994:

… [C]onsent of all parties to a conversation to the recording of that conversation was not required in instances where any party lacked an intent to keep the conversation private. The legislature sought to change that in the 1994 amendments by making clear that no recording could be made absent consent from all parties regardless of any lack of expectation of privacy. Thus, the statute now essentially deems all conversations to be private and not subject to recording even if the participants themselves have no expectation of privacy.

' 20.

The court further explained that individuals have a valid interest in the privacy of their communications:

The eavesdropping statute thus legitimately criminalizes audio recordings in these instances. The purpose of the statute to protect private conversations is thus served. However, the statute does not stop there. It criminalizes a whole range of conduct involving the audio recording of conversations that cannot be deemed in any way private. For example, the statute prohibits recording (1) a loud argument on the street; (2) a political debate in a park; (3) the public interactions of police officers with citizens (if done by a member of the general public); and (4) any other conversation loud enough to be overheard by others whether in a private or public setting. None of these examples implicate privacy interests, yet the statute makes it a felony to audio record each one.

' 21.

It was held that the statute's blanket ban on audio recordings swept so broadly that it criminalizes a great deal of wholly innocent conduct. For example, the court reasoned:

[I]f another person overhears what we say, we cannot control with whom that person may repeat what we said. That person may write down what we say and publish it, and this is not a violation of the eavesdropping statute. Yet if that same person records our words with an audio recording device, even if it is not published in any way, a criminal act has been committed. The person taking notes may misquote us or misrepresent what we said, but an audio recording is the best evidence of our words. Yet, the eavesdropping statute bars it. ' Illinois' privacy statute goes too far ' We hold that Section (a)(1)(A) of the eavesdropping statute is overbroad because a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.

' 23.

As a result, Illinois is currently without any protection against eavesdropping. The Illinois Senate has passed a new eavesdropping law, but the House of Representatives adjourned before taking action on an amendment by the Senate. The new bill allows recording of loud public arguments, recordings of police officers carrying out their public duties and other public occurrences. As mentioned, analysis cannot stop there because in Illinois even under the previous wiretap statute, an appellate court in In re Marriage of Karonis , 693 N.E.2d 1282 (Ill.App.1998), held that a guardian ad litem for children was properly allowed to listen to tape recordings, which the wife had secretly made, of the husband's telephone conversations with the children. This was so even though the trial court had entered an order barring the contents of the tapes as evidence.

The court reasoned that in discharging his or her duties, the guardian ad litem will review or consider all kinds of information regarding the child ' both admissible and inadmissible ' at trial. It was held that reviewing the tapes materially advanced the guardian ad litem's ability to determine and defend the child's interest.

New York

New York, on the other hand, is one of the majority of what are sometimes referred to as “one party” states. Penal Law Section 250.05 is New York's state equivalent of the federal wiretap act, prohibiting the use of recordings obtained through eavesdropping where intercepted without the victim's permission. A person who is a party to a conversation or has the consent of one of the parties can lawfully record it or disclose its contents.

In Gurevich v. Gurevich , 886 N.Y.S.2d 558 (N.Y.Sup.Ct. 2009), it was held that the wife did not unlawfully intercept e-mails of the husband, in part because the e-mail was not intercepted when sent, but was stored in the e-mail account. This is so even though the wife admitted she took the e-mails from the husband's account. She contended that he had provided her with his password and had never changed it. The parties had been separated for three years. See In the Matter of Harry R. v. Esther R. , 510 N.Y.S.2d 792 (N.Y.Fam.Ct. 1986) (father's recordings of phone conversations with children were not illegal eavesdropping because the conversations were recorded by him as either the sender or receiver of the conversations).

Florida

Florida is an “all parties” state. In O'Brien v. O'Brien , 899 So.2d 1133 (D.C.A.Fla. 2005), the court held that the wife illegally intercepted the husband's e-mails and instant messaging communications with another woman. The Florida Security of Communications Act found in Chapter 934 of the Florida statute was violated. But the case turned on a fine technological point. The wife had installed a particular brand of spyware on the husband's computer that immediately copied and stored the communications. The court indicated that the result might be different if the wife merely accessed communications stored after the fact and not contemporaneously intercepted. A federal case, United States v. Steiger , 318 F.3d 1039 (11th Cir.) cert. denied 538 U.S. 1051 (2003), was distinguished. In Steiger , a virus allowed a hacker access to materials stored on the hard drive. Since this merely copied information, this was not an interception within the meaning of the federal wiretap act, after which the Florida Act was modeled.

It was noted that a loophole in the Florida Act excluded electronic communications and so the court ruled that technically these communications were not excludable under the Act. However, the trial court had excluded them, noting that it was an illegal act in intercepting the communication. It held that the refusal of the trial court to admit them into evidence was not an abuse of discretion.

More recently a Court of Appeals in Florida decided McDade v. Florida , 114 So.3d 465 (D.C.A.Fla. 2013). In that case, a victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather recorded him making certain incriminating statements. The recordings were the primary reason the defendant was convicted of criminal charges. The Court of Appeals in Florida affirmed the conviction, citing a prior case indicating that the prohibition against recording communications without consent only applies where the person has a reasonable explanation of privacy under the circumstances. The majority held that the defendant's expectation of privacy was not reasonable measured against what society is prepared to accept as reasonable.

Although the court affirmed the conviction, it certified for appeal to the Florida Supreme Court the question of whether a recording of solicitation and confirmation of child sexual abuse is a violation of Chapter 934. That appeal was argued in March of this year and the case has been designated as a “high profile case” in Florida. Judge Chris Altenbernd, concurring specially, stated that the defendant had no reasonable expectation that his conversation about the abuse would not be recorded. However, he expressed concern about the Florida statute, indicating that:

In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon began secretly recording conversations in the White House. (citation omitted) When this was discovered, the public was very troubled by the practice. In 1974, with virtually no debate, the legislature amended Florida's statute to require the consent of 'all of the parties' to a conversation. (citation omitted) The 'all party' version of this statute remains a minority view; many states and the federal government continue to require the consent of only a single party. See, e.g. , 18 U.S.C.A. Section 2511(2)(a)(iii)(d)(2012); See generally Carol M. Bast, What's Bugging You? Inconsistency and Irrationalities of the Law of Eavesdropping, 47 DePaul L. Rev . 837 (1998) (surveying state-by-state consent laws).” 114 So.3d at 473. [He concludes by stating,] The huge advances in technology that have affected our society's view of privacy should prompt the legislature to review the 1974 amendment and to decide whether it would now be more prudent to return to a statute comparable to the federal statute and the statute in place in most other states.

Id. at 475.

Judge Craig C. Villanti, concurring in part and dissenting in part, had even larger concerns. Noting that the recorded conversations took place in the defendant's bedroom, he stated:

I cannot concieve of a location where an individual has a greater expectation of privacy than in his or her own bedroom in his or her own house ' an area that has been traditionally presumed to have a heightened right of privacy, not a reduced one. See, e,g., Katz v. United States , 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (noting that 'a man's home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy') (Harlan, J. concurring); Jardines v. State , 73 So.3d 34, 45 (Fla.2011) (noting that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her home).

Id. at 476.

California

California is another “all parties” state. The California Invasion of Privacy Act, Sections 631 and 632, were enacted in 1967 and replaced prior laws that had permitted conversations to be recorded with the consent of only one party. Additionally, California Family Code Section 2022 states that evidence collected by eavesdropping in violation of that statutory code is inadmissible. Courts in California have interpreted the statute as prohibiting far more than wiretapping. For example, in Ribas v. Clark , 696 P.2d 637 (Cal. 1985), a lawyer listening in on an extension heard a conversation between her client and her client's former spouse. Her client testified to the conversation and subsequently, the former husband sued the lawyer for violation of the Invasion of Privacy Act.

The Supreme Court of California held that the ex-husband stated a claim against his former wife's attorney. The court noted that, “to the extent that the broad language and purposes of the Privacy Act may encompass conduct that some people believe should not be proscribed, their remedy is to ask the legislature to draft a statute they find more palatable.” 38 Cal.3d at 362.

The California Supreme Court had interpreted the statute in Flanagan v. Flanagan , 27 Cal.4th 766 (Cal. 2002). It was held that the statute prohibits recording of a phone call without consent of all parties but only if the call includes a “confidential communication.” That excludes a situation where the parties may reasonably suspect that the communication may be overheard or recorded. Flanagan was a case between a mother and her son. Space does not permit a full description herein, but the facts of this case are fascinating and include the wife's alleged attempt to murder her husband. It further involves her manicurist taping her telephone conversations after that revelation. The wife sued the manicurist and her son and as it turned out, the son's conversations with his father were being taped by his mother and he countersued.

It was held that to prove a violation, the contents of each conversation need not be proved; it suffices if the person had an objectively reasonable expectation that he was not being recorded. It was noted that the legislature had increased the protection of the statute by prohibiting malicious interception of calls from or to cellular or cordless phones and the intentional interception or recording of communications involving a cellular phone or a cordless phone. 27 Cal. 4th at 776.

The court concluded:

Significantly, those statutes protect against interception or recording of any communication. When the Legislature determined that there was no practical means of protecting cordless or cellular phone conversations from accidental eavesdropping, it chose to protect all such conversations from malicious or intentional eavesdropping or recording, rather than protecting only conversations where a party wanted to keep the content secret. ' It would be anomalous to interpret the Privacy Act as protecting all cellular or cordless phone conversations, but only those landline conversations that the parties intended to keep secret ' especially because, as here, many conversations take place between persons using different types of telephones.

Id.

Conclusion

As can be seen there is no “one size fits all” methodology to these cases. The applicable law in the state in question must be checked ' and re-checked.

Paul L. Feinstein, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a Chicago sole practitioner with 34 years of experience. He limits his practice to family law, with emphasis on divorce litigation, consulting, mediation and appeals. He was recently named one of Illinois' Top 100 Lawyers for 2014 by Super Lawyers. For more information, go to paulfeinstein.com.