Door Properties, LLC v. Nahlawi

2021 IL App (1st) 190235-U

Opinion

2021 IL App (1st) 190235-U

THIRD DIVISION August 25, 2021

No. 1-19-0235

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1). ______________________________________________________________________________

IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT ______________________________________________________________________________

DOOR PROPERTIES, LLC, SERRANI CAROL ) ANDERSON, MIDWEST BANK TRUST COMPANY, ) Appeal from the and WILDWOOD, LLC, ) Circuit Court of ) Cook County (Door Properties, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellee) ) ) 10 L 12931 v. ) ) Honorable AYAD M. NAHLAWI, ) Thomas More Donnelly, ) Judge Presiding Defendant-Appellant. ) _____________________________________________________________________________

JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court. Presiding Justices Fitzgerald Smith and Howse concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: Affirmed. Without adequate record, we presume circuit court properly denied defendant’s objections to supplemental discovery requests and properly held him in civil contempt for failing to answer them.

¶2 This case is yet another chapter in Door Properties’s nearly decade-long attempt to

collect an approximately $750,000 judgment from Ayad M. Nahlawi. See Door Properties, LLC

v. Nahlawi, 2015 IL App (1st) 131256-U (affirming judgment); Door Properties, LLC v.

Nahlawi, 2020 IL App (1st) 173163 (reversing judgment against third-party citation respondent

and remanding for hearing); Door Properties, LLC v. Nahlawi, 2021 IL App (1st) 182568-U

(affirming trial court’s discovery ruling and imposition of contempt for noncompliance). No. 1-19-0235

¶3 In the most recent appeal earlier this year, we held that the circuit court did not abuse its

discretion in overruling Nahlawi’s relevancy and proportionality objections to certain discovery

requests regarding his relationship with various entities. See Nahlawi, 2021 IL App (1st)

182568-U. We recognized there that Door Properties’s theory is that Nahlawi, while claiming to

be asset-free to avoid paying Door Properties, in fact has been receiving compensation through

parents, friends, or various entities related to those individuals—“compensation that would not

land on a W-2 or 1099 form, but compensation nevertheless.” Id. ¶ 44. So trying to learn more

about the relationships between Nahlawi and these friends, family, and their businesses was

highly relevant in attempting to collect on its sizeable outstanding judgment. Id.

¶4 In this appeal, Nahlawi is challenging the court’s decision to overrule essentially the

same objections as last time, but to a different set of discovery requests. And this time, without

an adequate record, to boot. Door Properties’s response is essentially the same as last time. And

our feeling on the matter is the same, too.

¶5 Specifically, in 2018, Door Properties issued a Supplemental Rider to its citation to

discover assets. Many of these supplemental requests related to expenses paid by the various

entities at issue in our previous decision. See id. ¶ 7. As an example, Door Properties identified

29 different individuals or businesses that it suspects may be funneling money to Nahlawi and

sought from him “any documents relative to living expenses for [Nahlawi] paid from 2013 to the

present, including, but not limited to living expenses, rent, automobile expenses, insurance

expenses, legal fees, court costs, education expenses and vacations.” In total, Door Properties

issued 27 document requests and 10 interrogatories, all of which had this general theme.

¶6 Predictably, Nahlawi objected to each of the requests at issue with a nearly identical

objection as last time—namely, that the request was

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“vague, overbroad in scope and duration, seeks irrelevant information and information

that is not material to the state purpose of a citation to discover assets. It is well settled

that the only relevant inquiries in a supplemental proceeding are (1) whether the

judgment debtor is holding assets that should be applies to the judgment; and (2) whether

a third-party citation respondent is holding assets of the judgment debtor that should be

applied to the judgment. -[citation omitted]. Further, [the request] violates the

proportionately [sic] requirement imposed by Illinois Supreme Court Rule 201(c)(3). The

time, effort and expense associated with searching, including searching a wealth of

electronically stored information, [looking for the information requested] is wholly

disproportionate to and greatly outweighed by whatever limited usefulness such

documents might have.”

¶7 On November 20, 2018, the court overruled Nahlawi’s objections to the Supplemental

Rider and ordered him to answer. Two days before the deadline to answer, Nahlawi sought a

finding of “friendly” contempt regarding his continued objections to the Supplemental Rider. On

December 13, the court technically granted the motion for “friendly” contempt but found

Nahlawi to be in willful noncompliance and thus also imposed a not-so-friendly $100/day

sanction until Nahlawi purged the contempt by responding to the Supplemental Rider.

¶8 Before this court, Nahlawi repeats his objections and claims the court erred in overruling

them and holding him in indirect civil contempt. But there’s a problem. We have no transcript of

proceedings to review. It is the appellant’s burden to provide a sufficient record to support his

claims. Xcel Supply LLC v. Horowitz, 2018 IL App (1st) 162986, ¶ 52. Without a transcript or

other adequate record, we generally presume that the court acted in accordance with the facts and

the law. See Foutch v. O’Bryant, 99 Ill. 2d 389, 391-92 (1984).

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¶9 That is particularly true when, as here, both of the challenged decisions—the discovery

ruling and the contempt citation—are discretionary. See id. (review of discretionary ruling

impossible absent transcript explaining court’s reasoning); Burdess v. Cottrell, Inc. 2020 IL App

(5th) 190279, ¶¶ 63, 84 (trial court has broad discretion in ruling on discovery matters, and

decision on proportionality objection reviewed for abuse of discretion); Doe v. Weinzweig, 2015

IL App (1st) 133424, ¶ 14 (civil contempt “will not be disturbed on appeal unless it is against the

manifest weight of the evidence or the record reflects an abuse of discretion”).

¶ 10 In the previous case, we had an adequate record, including transcripts of the relevant

hearings, and we upheld the trial court’s discovery order and contempt citation. Nahlawi, 2021

IL App (1st) 182568-U, ¶¶ 24-27, 49, 57. We laid out there what the trial court perceived as

Nahlawi’s long history of delay and gamesmanship in this discovery fight. See id. ¶ 49. Here, at

least on paper, it seems the court was once again saying “enough is enough,” again deciding to

impose “less than friendly” contempt. See id. ¶¶ 56-57.

¶ 11 Even in the unlikely event that Nahlawi could persuade us otherwise this time around,

with more or less the same discovery requests and same arguments from both sides, his failure to

include an adequate record is a fatal blow to his appeal. We cannot possibly overturn the trial

court’s rulings for an abuse of discretion when we cannot review why the trial court ruled as it

did. See Foutch, 99 Ill. 2d at 391-92. We thus affirm the judgments in all respects.

¶ 12 Affirmed.

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