Articles Posted in Auto Accidents

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In a recent Illinois auto accident case, a Cook County jury returned a verdict for $190,705 against two defendants who were responsible for the injuries suffered by a mother, Marie Tucker and her daughter Amy, age 8, who was in the back seat of the family car.

On July 8, 2006, the Tucker vehicle was stopped on Western Avenue in the City of Chicago just north of Berwyn Avenue. It was then that the Tucker car was rear-ended by the tow truck being driven by defendant Christopher Maness. The tow truck was owned and maintained by Hollywood Towing Inc. which was also a defendant in this case.

Marie Tucker, age 49, suffered a herniated disk to her lower lumbar spine. Amy, who was seat-belted in the back seat, suffered only minor injuries from the Illinois auto accident.

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An Illinois family was decimated by the wrongful death of a 27 year old woman, April Simmons, who was eight months pregnant when the vehicle driven by John Homatas ran head-on into her SUV near South Elgin, Illinois. The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit claimed that the West Chicago strip club, Diamonds Gentlemen’s Club, owned and operated by On Stage Productions, Inc., was negligent when its employees assisted an apparently drunk patron, John Homatas, and his friend into Homatas’s car, Simmons v. Homatas, 236 Ill.2d 459, 925 N.E.2d 1089 (Ill. 2010), and thus was liable for the Illinois car and SUV accident.

The Illinois wrongful death case revolved around the fact that the drunk driver and another man had gotten drunk at the club and were ejected by bouncers. Homatas was seen in the club’s men’s room vomiting. The employees then escorted Homatas and John Chiarello out of the club. The Illinois car crash with woman’s vehicle occurred only fifteen minutes after Homatas left Diamonds. Chiarello was also killed.

The strip club does not serve liquor, but patrons were allowed to bring their own. Because of that fact, Diamonds argued it was not responsible for Homatas’ bad acts. In fact the Illinois wrongful death case had been argued in the circuit court on Diamonds’ motion to dismiss. The motion was denied and an appeal was taken. The review went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, which ruled that the club did make itself accountable for Homatas. The facts were that the bouncers had instructed the valet service to bring around Homatas’ car to the front and left it running for him.

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The Illinois Appellate Court recently reviewed a trial court’s summary judgment ruling in an Illinois auto accident case. The trial court had granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment under the Dead Man’s Act following the death of Edward Henry, one of the defendants. However, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the lower court’s decision and remanded the Illinois personal injury claim back to the trial court. Ladys Balma and Linda Gallup v. Edward Henry and Cynthia Grosvenor, No. 2-09-1301.

The Illinois Code of Civil Procedure has an act called The Dead Man’s Act (735 ILCS 5/8‑201). In Balma, the defendant Edward Henry died before the case came up for trial. Henry’s estate and the other defendant, Cynthia Grosvenor, brought a motion for summary judgment, citing the Dead Man’s Act as grounds for the Illinois personal injury case‘s dismissal.

Under the Dead Man’s Act, “no adverse party or person directly interested in the action shall be allowed to testify on his or her own behalf to any conversation with the deceased . . . or to any event which took place in the presence of the deceased.” Therefore, the defendants in Balma argued that because the decedent’s evidence deposition had not been taken that there was no testimony that could be used in his defense at trial. The trial court agreed and therefore granted the motion for summary judgment, which in essence dismissed the Illinois auto accident case.

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An Illinois wrongful death case recently settled in Will County for $5 million. The case was brought by the estate of a 57 year-old married mother of two adult children after she was killed in an Illinois auto accident. Estate of Heinz v. Messel, et al., No. 07 L 0090.

The highway crash took place on I-55, a highway connecting Chicago to St. Louis. The decedent driver was traveling northbound on the highway in the area of the Plainfield Township when a car driving southbound crossed the grassy median separating the different directions of traffic and crashed into the woman’s vehicle. The head-on crash caused the decedent’s car to flip over and land in a ditch off to the side of the highway.

An investigation of the accident revealed that the at fault driver was intoxicated at the time of the Illinois car crash. Whenever an Illinois car accident involves a DUI, the Illinois state’s attorney can bring his/her own criminal charges against the offending driver. Under Illinois law, a person may be deemed intoxicated if their blood alcohol content (BAC) is measured at .08 or higher. Presumably some sort of action was taken in response to the fatal car accident; however, the criminal action would have been completely separate from the civil action involving the wrongful death claims.

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Many people’s circumstances never require them to file one lawsuit, let alone two. Yet within the span of four months Jihan Khourny was injured on two different occasions, leading to her filing two different, but related lawsuits – one being an Illinois personal injury lawsuit, the other an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit. Both cases recently settled for a combination of $1.9 million. Khourny v. Sarmed Elias, M.D., et al., No. 07 L 3871.

The personal injury claim arose from a car crash that occurred in Elgin, Illinois. Khourny was driving along Route 31 when she was hit by another car. The Illinois car accident lawsuit was brought against the driver of the other vehicle and settled for $100,000. The plaintiff was claiming property damage to her vehicle and a neck injury as a result of the car accident.

Shortly after the accident Khourny began seeking medical treatment for her neck injury. Her doctor recommended she try cortisone injections as part of her treatment plan. Cortisone injections are typically given to relieve inflammation and pain and are used for a wide variety of complaints, including arthritis, tendinitis, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

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While it is somewhat common for two vehicles involved in an Illinois car accident to be covered by the same insurance company, it is very rare that both those vehicles are covered under the same insurance policy. In Progressive Premier Insurance Company of Illinois v. Kocher, No. 5-07-0468, both vehicles involved in an Illinois motorcycle accident were owned by the same family and covered on the same insurance policy. The case was brought to the Illinois Appellate Court to help shed light on what to do in these unusual circumstances.

The Illinois auto accident occurred when Nick Kocher’s motorcycle collided with his father’s ATV. Luke Kocher was a passenger on the ATV at the time of the crash and sustained severe head injuries. Luke required a lengthy hospitalization and recovery, which resulted in a large amount of medical bills.

The Kocher family turned to Progressive Insurance Company of Illinois, their auto insurer, for payment of the bills that were a result of the motorcycle accident. Both the motorcycle and ATV were insured on the same policy, along with a third vehicle. The policy coverage included limits of $100,000 per person and $300,000 total for each vehicle.

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A Cook County personal injury lawsuit involving an Illinois auto accident that left a 19 year-old girl a quadriplegic recently received a $6.05 million settlement. The bulk of the settlement in Perez v. Baeza, et al., No. 09 L 3958 came from Sparco, a distributor of race car seats that was involved in the case under product liability claims. Sparco contributed $6 million, which was the full extent of its insurance policy.

The events leading to the case began in 2005 when Perez’s boyfriend, Baeza, was driving them home from a quinceañera, i.e. a coming of age celebration for a 15 year-old girl. Baeza had been drinking and was speeding along when his car left the roadway and struck a tree. He was later charged with an aggravated DUI.

At the time of the Illinois car crash Perez was a passenger in the front seat. Baeza had modified the front seats of his car, replacing the factory-installed seats with race car seats distributed by the California-based Sparco Motor Sports, Inc. Perez was left a quadriplegic as a result of the auto accident.

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In the Illinois personal injury case of Anderson v. Zamir, No. 5-08-0542, the plaintiff filed a motion for a new trial after the jury returned a verdict awarding only part of her medical bills. The plaintiff’s medical bills as a result of the rear-end car crash totaled $28,804. However, the jury returned a verdict of only $12,500; only $5,000 of which was for her medical bills with the remaining $7,500 for pain and suffering.

While typically an Appellate Court will not overturn a jury’s monetary awards since this is “an issue of fact for the jury to determine”. Typically a jury’s verdict awards will only be overturned if a party shows that the jury obviously ignored an established element of damages, that the award does not relate to the loss suffered, or if the verdict was the result of prejudice.

The facts of the case were that the plaintiff was rear-ended by the defendant. She did not seek treatment for the car crash until the day after the accident, at which time she was complaining of headaches and neck pain. The plaintiff went on to receive several rounds of physical therapy, but with little relief. She eventually underwent surgery to repair a tear in her shoulder.

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A Cook County auto accident case will be retried on damages after an Illinois Appellate Court decision to grant plaintiff’s motion in Kiggins v. Mather, No. 1-08-1753. At the original personal injury trial the plaintiff had received a verdict of $49,711 for medical expenses and lost earnings. However, the original verdict did not return any damages for disfigurement, loss of normal life, or pain and suffering.

In Illinois, the amount of damages awarded is typically left up to the jury’s discretion. The jury is given judge-approved jury instructions so that the jury can make an informed decision regarding its verdict. Oftentimes if a party disagrees with the verdict their appeal focuses on the content of these jury instructions. For example, in Ready v. United/Goedecke Services, Inc., No. 108910, the Appellate Court considered issues regarding the sole proximate cause jury instruction.

However, in Kiggins, the issue was not the jury instructions, but the jury’s decision itself. Kiggins argued that he should have been awarded damages for pain and suffering and disfigurement. The basis for this argument was that he had suffered more than a minor injury as a result of the auto accident and as such was entitled to additional non-economic damages.

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The Illinois Supreme Court will hear an Illinois product defect case to determine whether to affirm or remand a $43 million jury verdict against Ford Motor Co. in Jablonski et al., etc. v. Ford Motor Company, No. 11096. The Illinois product liability lawsuit included claims that the auto manufacturer negligently installed a rear axle fuel tank, which caused injuries to the plaintiffs following a high-speed, rear-collision auto accident.

The Illinois Appellate Court has already affirmed the lower court’s ruling, but Ford Motor Co. brings its arguments before the Illinois Supreme Court in an attempt to reverse the trial court’s rulings and resulting product defect jury verdict. Jablonski was filed after the plaintiffs were involved in a rear-end auto accident where their 1993 Lincoln Town Car was struck by a Chevrolet Lumina at 60 mph. The force of the collision propelled a pipe wrench laying in plaintiffs’ trunk through the trunk’s walls and into the fuel tank, which resulted in a fire that left the husband dead and the wife severely burned.

The 1993 Lincoln Town car was one of the four vehicles, including one designed for police, that was built with a fuel tank behind the rear axle. Plaintiffs allege that Ford was not only negligent in locating the fuel tank in that position, but it also failed to guard against and warn of the dangers of locating the fuel tank behind the rear axle.

Rather than filing a strict liability lawsuit, the plaintiffs’ brought a negligent design claim against the car manufacturer. While strict liability and negligence claims both require the plaintiff to prove that there was a design defect, the negligence claim also requires that the manufacturer knowingly failed to exercise reasonable care. Because there is an additional burden of proof under manufacturer negligence claims most product liability lawsuits include strict liability, not negligence claims.

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