Pro Bono Case: Chicago French Bulldog Rescue
July 2026 Update
We continue our pro bono representation of Mary Catherine Scheffke, the founder of a Chicago not-for-profit animal rescue, in an ongoing matter before the Circuit Court of Cook County, Chancery Division (Case No. 2026CH04709). Ms. Scheffke founded the rescue and served as its on-site director for roughly eighteen years, building it into an organization dedicated to taking in and rehoming animals in need.
The Court granted our motion for a temporary restraining order, and then, after a hearing, our motion for a preliminary injunction. This temporarily restores her role and preserves the status quo while the case proceeds.
This summer, we advanced the matter on two fronts.
Our amended complaint sets out a course of conduct. It alleges that the directors used the rescue's charitable funds to pay lawyers to investigate and remove its founder; that they halted the rescue's intake of animals in a way that made the founder easier to remove and the property she occupies easier to empty and sell; and that they used the organization's own official platforms to publish statements against her, alienating donors and volunteers. The complaint's point is a simple one. A board is free to disagree with its founder, to resign, and to build a rescue of its own. It is not free to seize the name, the funds, and the platforms of the organization Ms. Scheffke spent eighteen years building and turn them against her, or to close its doors to the animals it exists to save in order to force her out.
The amended complaint brings five counts. It seeks a declaratory judgment that the rescue's 2008 bylaws are its only operative governing documents and that the 2009 documents the directors relied on to remove Ms. Scheffke are void. It asserts a direct claim for breach of fiduciary duty against the two directors who initiated her removal. And it brings three derivative claims on behalf of the rescue itself: for breach of fiduciary duty and waste of charitable assets, for the misuse of the rescue's official platforms against its founder, and for declaratory relief and a surcharge to restore the charitable funds the directors spent.
The relief we ask the court to enter follows from those claims. It includes a declaration that the 2009 documents and Ms. Scheffke's removal are void; injunctions protecting her role, her home, her access to the rescue's funds, and the rescue's intake of animals, and barring the directors from turning the organization's name and official channels against her; an accounting of the charitable funds paid to the directors and their counsel; the restoration of those funds through a surcharge and a constructive trust; and the removal of the three directors from the board.
We also filed a reply in support of our emergency motion for a protective order. The defendants had demanded an inspection of Ms. Scheffke's residence. Our reply argues that this demanded entry is a step toward selling the property, which cannot be squared with the status quo injunction already in place; indeed, the defendants' own response describes the inspection as a means of assessing what is needed to ready the property for sale. The reply further argues that an entry of this kind is, in substance, a discovery request that must proceed through the procedures Illinois Supreme Court Rule 214 requires, and that the court can and should enter a protective order under Rule 201(c)(1). The motion is fully briefed and now pending before the court.
Perhaps most significantly, the three board members have halted the rescue's intake of animals, the single function it was founded eighteen years ago to perform. At its heart, this case is about whether the person who built this rescue can continue that work. Over nearly two decades, Ms. Scheffke and the rescue she founded have saved the lives of hundreds of French Bulldogs. We are proud to stand with her, and we remain committed to pro bono representation for worthy causes.
The pleadings can be read here:
Reply In Support of Motion for Protective Order