Articles Posted in Firm News

Firm News | March 13, 2015

Illinois currently has a statute of limitations on personal injury claims of two years. Generally, that is understood that you will have two years from the date of your accident to file a lawsuit against a responsible party. Illinois also allows residents up to five years from the date of the accident to sue for damage to their property.

Although you have two years to file your personal injury claim, you should not wait until the 23rd month before taking action. In fact, there are some steps you should do immediately. Depending on how badly you were injured, you should consider taking photographs of the accident scene before the vehicles are moved. You should also consider interviewing any available witnesses who might have seen the accident occur. Additionally, you should request a copy of the police accident report just as soon as possible.

Firm News | March 4, 2015

The central location of our state in the middle of the nation’s main highways ensures that Illinois roads are constantly filled with commercial tractor-trailers. Big rig drivers naturally go through rather rigorous training and testing to make sure that they can handle their vehicles under a variety of conditions.

A primary component of all Commercial Driver’s License testing is to ensure that drivers know how to prevent trailer skids and jackknife accidents. A jackknife truck accident occurs when the wheels of a trailer component of a tractor-trailer combo loses traction with the surface of the road. The loss of traction results in the trailer component swinging around towards the front of the cab. This type of accident is called a jackknife because the result of trailer swinging forward resembles the closing action when folding a pocket knife.

Firm News | February 26, 2015

On Feb. 5, the Consumer Product Safety Commission published a recall for a children’s highchair. The product, manufactured by a company called Mima, is suspected of having a design defect that reportedly allows the high chair to come loose from its base. According to the recall, the “Mima Moon 3 in 1 high chair” has the potential to injure children sitting in the device or crawling under it.

The primary issue with the high chair is that its design consists of a two-footed base that supports the seat on a single post. The seat can reportedly become detached from the post, allowing the child sitting within the modern-looking, semicircle seat to fall to the ground. The seat also poses an impact danger to children crawling underneath it due to the possibility that it may become detached from its post and fall onto a crawling child.

Firm News | February 16, 2015

You hear it all the time in the news. People in the health care profession claiming that medical malpractice lawsuits are unnecessarily driving up costs. Many of them argue that doctors are engaging in “defensive medicine” in order to avoid potential litigation. There are rumors about doctors ordering scores of unnecessary tests in efforts to forestall any failure to diagnose claims down the road.

Regardless of those opinions, patients have a right not to be harmed or placed at unnecessary risk of injury by those who are entrusted with their care. In fact, two recent papers have shown that tort reform has had little to no effect on the U.S. health care system. Tort reform is essentially an effort to reduce the amount of non-economic damages victims are allowed to seek in medical malpractice cases.

Firm News | February 5, 2015

If you were previously unaware, then you should now know that texting and driving is illegal throughout Illinois. Unlike other states, the ban on texting and driving in Illinois applies to every age group regardless of whether you’re a teenager or senior citizen. In fact, the Illinois Department of Transportation and several other safety agencies have joined together to promote their safety program called “Drive now, text later. You can’t do both,”

The dangers of texting and driving are substantial. According to the National Safety Council, nearly 1.2 million or roughly 24 percent of all traffic collisions can be attributed to drivers who text and talk on their cellphones while operating their vehicles. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a driver who is texting while operating his or her vehicle stands a 23 times greater chance of having an accident during that interval when he or she is sending a text.

Firm News | January 27, 2015

If you have been injured in a collision with a tractor-trailer, your decision to act quickly is important to preserving your future claims. In a previous posting to our website, we discussed how gathering evidence soon after a truck accident greatly increases the effectiveness of that information.

Our law firm utilizes a variety of methods on behalf of our clients to ensure that we get a full understanding of the events that may have contributed to your truck accident injuries. In some cases, we may deploy forensic investigators to comb through the accident scene. In other cases, we might utilize aerial photography or even computer animation to re-create possible scenarios. We also look at the driver’s logbooks and the trucking company’s maintenance records to ensure their compliance with state and federal regulations.

Firm News | January 23, 2015

Consumers have a right to expect that toys purchased for their children will not put them at unnecessary risk of harm. Alternatively, manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers of children’s toys have a duty to immediately report whenever they learn of potential safety hazards posed by their products. In fact, they are required to do that reporting to the Consumer Products Safety Commission within 24 hours.

In a perfect world, toy manufacturers would run their products through extensive testing procedures designed to eliminate certain hazards such as choking, poisoning or pinching.

Firm News | January 14, 2015

If you live in the state of Illinois, it may come as no surprise that when it comes to workplace-related slip and falls due to inclement weather, Illinois is fourth on the list. In fact, according to Liberty Mutual Research Institute, the state tied with third-place Michigan at 32 percent. Only Wisconsin at 33 percent and Indiana at 37 percent scored higher.

The institute, which for the last 15 years has kept an annual ranking of the top 10 causes of workplace injuries that were serious but not fatal in the United States, found that nationwide falls that occurred on the same level accounted for $9.19 billion in workers’ compensation costs for 2012. It was one of the leading causes of injuries in the workplace, second only to overexertion that had a workers’ compensation cost of $15.1 billion.

Firm News | December 25, 2014

Authorities in Evanston, Illinois, say that a UPS truck driver has been cited for allegedly striking a pedestrian with a delivery truck. An Evanston, Illinois, police spokesperson reported that the accident occurred at around 5:00 p.m. on Dec. 22. According to police, the UPS truck driver had been traveling down Central Avenue and had begun to turn southbound onto Ashland Avenue when the accident occurred.

Authorities say that the turning UPS truck struck a 30-year-old Evanston, Illinois, woman somewhere near that intersection, trapping her underneath the vehicle. Police would not confirm whether the victim was in the crosswalk at the time of accident. However, police did issue the driver a citation for failure to exercise due care to avoid a pedestrian. The delivery truck driver was reportedly unaware that he had struck the woman until he heard her screams.

Firm News | December 4, 2014

Medical malpractice is often the most emotionally devastating type of personal injury because there is an element of trust involved. Most of us rely on our doctors to preserve our health and prevent us from exposure to avoidable injuries. There are many forms of medical malpractice including patient neglect, misdiagnosis and even prescribing incorrect or inappropriate medicines. Arguably, the worst forms of medical malpractice occurs when a doctor conducts surgery on the wrong patient or in the wrong location on a patient’s body.

According to a 2008 quality handbook published by the National Institutes of Health, many doctors were simply unaware of the actual numbers of patients injured by WSS until 1999. That was the year that the Institute of Medicine published a report which catalogued a series of injuries, deaths and near-misses due to surgical errors.