After the City of Chicago sued Sequoia Financial Solutions, Inc. in Illinois state court for violating the City’s building code, Sequoia demolished the allegedly offending structure rather than continue to defend the suit, which the City then dismissed. Two months later, Sequoia brought a case against the City and several City employees for allegedly falsifying an inspection report and coercing Sequoia into tearing down the structure through its allegedly baseless state court suit.
The District Court dismissed, struggling to make sense of Sequoia’s claims and noting that Sequoia had at all times been entitled to undertake its own inspection and to challenge the City’s findings in state court.