Legislation amending Illinois’ Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act won’t be taken up this session after all.
Both the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois and the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild filed bills to alter the Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act; which governs the business end of the brewer/distributor relationship. We wrote about the act in greater detail last month.
The ABDI wanted to require a brewer who terminates an agreement with their distributor to continue to supply a wholesaler with beer until reasonable compensation is accepted by the distributor. The ICBG wanted to shrink the amount of time a wholesaler would retain the rights to a brewers beers while the two settle their dispute over reasonable compensation.
The two sides have met a few times this session, in February and again this week, to talk about the Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act — among other things. The February meeting revealed a red flag for the Brewers Guild in the ABDI bill so the organization quickly pulled the it from their to-do list this session. That red flag, however, wasn’t revealed to us. This week the two talked about the ICBG bills which, according to Guild Executive Director Justin Maynard, will be shelved until next year.
Maynard tells Guys Drinking Beer they’re going to work with the ABDI to craft new language with the hopes of introducing a new bill next legislative session.
While not equating to passed legislation, it appears that the ABDI and ICBG are having more frequent and fruitful talks about the bills introduced this session.