In Illinois, parties to a lawsuit can file motions in limine in an effort to keep certain information from being brought up at trial. The Illinois Appellate Court recently reviewed an Illinois personal injury case, Ford v. Grizzle, No. 5-08-0185, after the plaintiff claimed the defense received a favorable jury…
After almost three years of legal battles, the Illinois Supreme Court came to a decision on whether economic limits should be placed on Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits. In Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, the Illinois high court upheld a Cook County Circuit Court ruling that the Illinois law on medical…
After a long and complicated battle, a major victory for class action and product defect lawsuits was noted in the case of Carideo v. Dell, Inc. In light of new events, the United States District Court Judge found that the computer company’s mandatory arbitration clause and class action ban was…
The final chapter of a long debate regarding whether the Illinois Vehicle Code’s “omnibus coverage” applies to commercial truckers was recently decided upon by the Illinois Supreme Court. The Court’s held in Zurich American Inc. Co. v. Key Cartage, Inc., No. 107472 (Oct 29, 2009) that Illinois commercial vehicles are…
Whenever I take on a new Chicago or Illinois personal injury case, one of the first things I tell my clients is that we will need to prepare the case all the way through for a jury trial. The nature of Illinois personal injury cases and Illinois medical negligence demands…
A lawsuit brought on behalf of an individual for Illinois medical malpractice was found to be a nullity because the supposed lawyer was unlicensed. The so-called nullity rule directly punished the unknowing client in this case. In Applebaum v. Rush University Medical Center, 2008 WL 4943860 (Nov. 20), the high…
In the many years that I have practiced medical malpractice in Cook County and Illinois, my clients have warned me that the pertinant medical records in their case had been falsified, changed, deleted or simply removed from the hospital and medical charts. In Illinois, the “intentional destruction, mutilation, alteration or…
There is a lot of information on the Internet that allows us to research everything from restaurants to shoemakers. And Illinois law is no exception. A number of free websites allow both lawyers and Illinois citizens to readily access a wide variety of legal information. The Illinois Supreme Court and…
Chicago’s 7th U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a federal district judge’s ruling that barred the Illinois product liability claim of Lenore Aebischer. In 1997 at age 44, Lenore underwent a hip replacement. But the prosthetic hip manufactured by defendant Stryker Corp. allegedly failed due to structural defects, and Lenore required…
Part of being a Chicago trial lawyer is presenting your client’s side of a story to a judge and jury. One way to do this is by submitting evidence during litigation, such as testimony, diagrams, and pictures. But what happens if a judge decides that you can’t show some of…