$50,000 in sanctions against an Illinois association's lawyer were vacated on a filing technicality
$50,000 in sanctions against an Illinois association's lawyer were vacated on a filing technicality
2026-09-10 · Illinois · Courts
What happened. On August 19, 2025 the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, Second Division, vacated and remanded more than $50,000 in Rule 137 sanctions against an association's attorney in Goodman Chicago Condos, LLC v. Atrium Court Village Home Condominiums, 2025 IL App (1st) 232329-U. It is a Rule 23 order and is not precedential.1
What the circuit court found
After an evidentiary hearing, the circuit court found that the attorney had fabricated an email purportedly from the condominium association president, and sanctioned him.
Why the sanctions were vacated
On a narrow ground: Rule 137 reaches only documents actually filed with the court, and the brief containing the fabricated email was never filed with the clerk.
The appellate court was pointed about what it was and was not doing. The disposition is “only on technical grounds, however important that technicality,” and it expressly remanded for the circuit court to consider other remedies for the fabricated email — and to reach three further allegations of fraud it had not decided.
The practice point
Rule 137 does not reach documents exchanged between counsel but never filed. That is a real and sometimes surprising limit, and it is the holding practitioners will cite.
Why this is worth reporting rather than filing away
Because a judicial finding that an association's counsel fabricated evidence in a dispute with two unit owners is not an ordinary event, and because the vacatur is procedural rather than exculpatory. The finding stands; only the vehicle for punishing it failed.
The remand is doing real work. A circuit court asked to consider “other remedies” for fabricated evidence has several — its inherent authority to sanction, referral to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, and consequences within the case itself.
What it means for owners in a dispute with an association
One concrete thing: documents that arrive from opposing counsel outside the court file are not part of the court file, and their provenance may never be tested unless someone tests it.
Here, someone did — and it took an evidentiary hearing to establish. That is expensive, and most owners in a $5,000 assessment dispute will not do it. The asymmetry is worth naming: an association litigating with two unit owners has counsel, a budget funded by the owners' own assessments, and a fee-shifting statute if it wins. The owners have their own money.
What it means for a board
The association is responsible for its counsel's conduct in a practical sense even where it is not liable for it in a legal one. A board whose lawyer is sanctioned in its case has a governance problem, not just a legal one, and it should ask what happened rather than treat a favourable appellate outcome as vindication.
More generally: boards delegate litigation almost entirely, and then learn about it from the result. A standing requirement that counsel report material developments — sanctions motions among them — to the full board rather than to a single officer is a small governance discipline that prevents this kind of surprise.
Where this sits in the year's Illinois record
It belongs with the other decisions where an Illinois association's conduct in litigation, rather than the merits of its position, produced the loss: a lien recorded for charges a court had rejected, with no evidence the board had taken advice; an emergency order sought where there was no emergency; and a fee award reversed for want of any stated reason.
What to watch next
The remand. The circuit court has been directed to consider other remedies and to decide three outstanding fraud allegations, and that is where this case's actual consequence will be determined.
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