Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

by

The SUMMARY OF MEDICARE ACT OF 2003.pdf requires the president to submit legislation to remedy Medicare’s money problems. Mixed up in this formula is the dangerous prospect that a tort reform provision will be attached that would severely limit the rights of citizens to bring Illinois medical negligence claims against doctors, hospitals, nurses and clinicians who may be responsible for injuring patients.

Tort reform or “deform”, as some opponents refer to it, has been enacted into law in many states, usually only to limit the ability of the injured to bring Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits. In 2005 Illinois fell to tort reform in medical negligence cases only, the constitutionality of which is now being challenged. A test case succeeded in the Circuit Court of Cook County, where Judge Larson found the law to be unconstitutional. Currently that circuit court decision is being appealed and a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court is due later this year on the validity of that act.

The requirement for legislation is triggered when Medicare funding exceeds 45% by the general revenues for two consecutive years. The act also requires the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and the House to submit their own bills for consideration.

Continue reading

by

On August 25, 2005, an Illinois law went into effect that placed monetary limits on the possible awards in medical malpractice cases (735 ILCS 5/2.1706.5). In a case against a hospital the caps are set at $1 Million, and against a physician at $500,000.

Since its inception this law has caused much debate, the most recent of which involves a November decision by the Cook County Circuit Court ruling this law to be unconstitutional. Judge Joan Diane Larsen determined that caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases violates the Illinois Constitution by violating the Separation of Powers Clause. This clause states that three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial) are separate and that no branch shall exercise powers properly belonging to another (Illinois Constitution).

Continue reading

by

A $2.1 Million settlement was reached against the hospital and doctors in an Illinois medical negligence lawsuit involving the wrongful death of a woman from brain herniation after being discharged from a hospital. She was discharged with complaints of headaches despite a diagnosis of a brain tumor.

Mary, a 50 year-old female, was diagnosed at South Suburban Hospital with a right frontal lobe meningioma in early September, 2003, at which time she was discharged from the hospital with a referral to a University of Chicago neurosurgeon. However, before seeing the neurosurgeon she presented back to South Suburban Hospital two days later complaining of headaches and vomiting.

She is given some pain medication and sent home. Early the next morning she is found unresponsive by her husband. She was taken by ambulance back to South Suburban, but died later that day. An autopsy revealed that the cause of the Illinois woman’s wrongful death was excessive fluid building up around her tumor causing her brain to shift to the left and down through the brain stem, putting extreme pressure on her brain, resulting in brain herniation.

Continue reading