LPP Attorney Peter Syregelas Secures Significant Coverage Victory: Court Grants Judgment on the Pleadings for Our Client

We are pleased to announce a major litigation victory secured by our coverage team in the Northern District of Illinois. On November 21, 2025, Judge Elaine Bucklo granted our client’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, conclusively resolving the federal declaratory-judgment action in our client’s favor.

The underlying suit was a putative class action asserting violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) alongside several common-law and statutory claims. The central issue before the Court was whether any of these allegations triggered a duty to defend under two commercial liability policies, or whether clear exclusionary language foreclosed coverage.

The briefing—led by Peter Syregelas—set out a comprehensive and persuasive analysis demonstrating that the underlying complaint was unequivocally a BIPA action “through and through,” with every non-BIPA count derivative of the alleged biometric-data collection and use. Syregelas also argued the Access or Disclosure of Confidential or Personal Information exclusion squarely barred coverage because the alleged injuries stemmed from the collection and disclosure of fingerprint data—precisely the type of nonpublic information the exclusion addresses – and the Recording and Distribution of Material or Information in Violation of Law exclusion independently negated any duty to defend, consistent with binding Illinois appellate and Seventh Circuit authority.  We also urged the Court to reject attempts to recast the underlying allegations as “property damage” or “bodily injury.”

The Court adopted these key arguments in full, holding that the BIPA counts were excluded as a matter of law and the remaining counts were derivative of the excluded BIPA claims and, therefore, independently excluded.  Judge Bucklo found that the complaint did not trigger any potentially applicable coverage grant, and the exclusions resolved the duty to defend conclusively on the pleadings. In the Court’s words, the outcome was the same regardless of whether the non-BIPA claims were framed as “derivative” or “independent”—they did not trigger any duty to defend.

This ruling reinforces the breadth and effectiveness of biometric-privacy-related exclusions and demonstrates the continued impact of well-crafted, targeted coverage briefing. Our firm remains a leader in navigating emerging privacy-liability disputes and defending insurers against expansive theories of coverage.