Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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A Cook County, Ill.,  jury has found that the Double Tree Hotel Chicago was not negligent when its hotel shuttle bus improperly transported the plaintiff, Mary Larkin, to the upper level terminal at O’Hare Airport by dropping her off on an expansion joint in the roadway, which was unsafe. As a result, Larkin fell and sustained a trimalleolar fracture of the right ankle, which required open reduction internal fixation surgery followed by a second procedure to remove some of the hardware.

The hotel asserted that Larkin failed to watch where she was walking. She had filed an earlier claim against the City of Chicago, which settled with her for $55,000.

The jury in this case, however, sided with Double Tree Hotel Chicago and found it not negligent or a cause of Larkin’s injuries.

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The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the mailbox rule applies when filing a notice of appeal. That means that if an appellant seeks an appeal to a higher court, the notice of appeal time is satisfied as long as the notice is mailed to the Clerk of the Circuit Court before the 30-day deadline expires. That is the case no matter when the notice of appeal is actually received and stamped as filed. The appellate court has also decided that the same principles of the mailbox rule apply to filing initial complaints or seeking post-judgment relief under §2-1401 of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure.

The question for the Illinois Supreme Court was whether the mailbox rule applied to Mark Gruszeczka’s request for judicial review of a ruling by the Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Gruszeczka alleged that he was injured while working for Alliance Contractors. He claimed  he was entitled to benefits under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. An arbitrator ruled against him, and there was no dispute that the mailbox rule applied when he asked the commission to review that decision.

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In September 2010, Thomas Berz was riding his bike in an Evanston alley when he hit a pothole. Berz fell off his bike and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He sued the City of Evanston in July 2011 claiming that it was negligent for choosing not to maintain the surface of the alley. A month later, Evanston filed a motion to dismiss on the basis that the Tort Immunity Act (745 ILCS 10/1-101 et seq.) protects the city from plaintiffs who are injured from using property differently than its intended use. 

The circuit court judge dismissed the case in November 2011, but granted Berz leave to amend his complaint. Berz amended the complaint providing new photographs of the alley’s condition and included greater detail on how this incident took place. Berz argued that under the Evanston Municipal Code and city-published bicycle maps, he was an intended user of the alley.

However, the trial court disagreed with Berz and dismissed his amended complaint in August 2012. But Berz filed a third amended complaint, arguing that his bike was a vehicle and therefore an intended user. Again, the city moved to dismiss arguing that a bicycle rider was not an intended user of an alley and the court agreed dismissing Berz’s complaint in November 2012.  Berz appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court, which reviewed whether a bicyclist was considered an intended user of the alley based on state law, the city’s ordinance and signage in the alley.

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During a relay race at a party for members of the Calvary Kids Club (CKC), a running backwards race resulted in an injury to one of the children, who broke both of her arms. The event was sponsored by the Calvary Chapel of Lake Villa.

The lawsuit for the injuries to Brittney Gallarneau was brought alleging that Calvary Chapel was negligent. The issue on the motion for summary judgment brought by the defendant Calvary Chapel was whether the Calvary Kid’s Club qualified as a school under Section 24-24 of the Illinois school law. The trial judge granted summary judgment in favor of Calvary Chapel, and this appeal followed.

The Illinois Appellate Court reversing the trial judge’s grant of summary judgment concluded that, “While Calvary provides religious instructions through Calvary Kid’s Club (CKC), CKC is nevertheless not the type of establishment that comes within the scope of Section 24-24; thus, Calvary is not entitled to the immunity provided by that section.”

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In a class action brought by Motorola investors it was maintained that during 2006, the company made false statements in order to disguise its inability to deliver a mobile phone for sale that would employ three different protocols. When it became public that Motorola could not produce the new mobile phone, its stock sank significantly. 

After the lawsuit had been pending for four years, the district court denied Motorola’s motion for summary judgment. After that, the parties settled for $200 million. The class members approved the settlement, but objected to the judge’s decision to award 27.5% of the settlement to the trial lawyers who represented the class.

One of the former class members filed an objection a month after the deadline. Though he filed an objection to the award of legal fees, the objector chose not to file a claim for his share of the settlement fund. As a result, the court of appeals concluded that the objector lacked any interest in the amount of attorney fees awarded and as a result, dismissed his appeal.

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Bank of America (“Bank”) lost about $34 million when Knight Industries went bankrupt. In the Bank’s lawsuit under federal diversity jurisdiction, it was alleged that Knight’s directors and managers looted the company and that its accountants neglected to detect the fraud. The parties had agreed that Illinois law applied. The district court dismissed all of the Bank’s claims on the pleadings on a motion. 

The accounting firm, Frost, Ruttenberg & Rothblatt, P.C. were Knight’s accountants.The accountants sought to invoke the protection of Illinois law under 225 ILCS 450/30.1, which provides that an accountant is liable only if the accountant himself/herself committed fraud or “was aware that a primary intent of the client was for the professional services to benefit or influence the particular person bringing the action.”  The district court here concluded that the bank’s complaint did not allege plausibly that the accounts knew that Knight’s “primary intent” was to benefit the bank. 

The lawsuit alleged that the accountants knew that Knight furnished copies of the financial statements to its lenders, including the Bank. But the district court judge observed that auditors always know that clients send statements to lenders (existing or prospective). The statute would be ineffectual if knowledge that clients show financial statements to third parties were enough to demonstrate that the client’s “primary intent” was to benefit a particular lender.

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Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has signed a bill into law that would require defendants in most civil cases to submit to plaintiffs an executed release within 14 days of a written settlement agreement. The new law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2014.

Significantly, the new law will require a defendant to pay all of the settlement amounts to the plaintiff within 30 days of the date that the signed release is tendered to the defendant. If the defendant fails to timely pay the money required by the agreement, the plaintiff can return to court on a motion for added costs and interest.

The law will create a new “Part 23” of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure to be titled “Settlement of Claims; Payment” (735 ILCS 5/2-2301).

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Geneva Lewis, age 72, slipped and fell on water on the floor at Pierre’s Bakery in Blue Island, Ill. It was Feb. 25, 2009 and  Lewis, a retiree, fell suffering a torn rotator cuff of her right shoulder.It required surgery to repair. A very painful recovery process followed.

The defendant, Pierre’s Bakery, contended that the floor where Lewis fell was dry and that the “wet floor” warning signs were in place, including a sign within 5 feet of where she fell. Pierre’s also claimed that Lewis was at fault for choosing not to keep a proper lookout and that her injuries were due to her age-related degenerative arthritis.

Pierre’s introduced photographs of the scene of the fall, which showed a dry floor with warning signs. 

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On Sept. 2, 2007, Susan Soine, age 42, was driving her car northbound on Route 41 in Highland Park, Ill., when she was hit by a car driven by the defendant, Marian Kinzinger, at Clavey Road. Soine alleged in her lawsuit that Kinzinger chose not to properly merge into the highway from the Clavey entrance ramp and instead crossed over the solid white lines and clipped the front of a semi-truck and then veered into the left lane and hit the plaintiff’s front passenger door. 

Kinzinger’s pick-up truck then rolled over and hit the rear of the Soine car shattering her rear window. Soine was injured.  She sustained a C5-6 neck injury, which required fusion surgery two months after the crash. 

At the end of the trial, Soine’s counsel moved the court for a directed verdict, which was granted. The directed verdict dealt with only the negligence of Kinzinger. The jury determined the amount of damages.

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Jose Bedoya, 43, was exiting westbound Interstate 90 at Lee Street when his car was hit from behind while stopped at the end of the exit ramp.  Bedoya was rear-ended by the defendant, Tina Raya, who was driving her GMC Yukon SUV. 

The impact, according to Bedoya, was heavy and pushed his car several feet forward. He said his head jerked forward and back. Bedoya was taken by ambulance to Resurrection Hospital with complaints of neck pain.

Although the crash was on Sept. 19, 2009, it wasn’t until August 2010 that an MRI showed that Bedoya suffered a large herniated disc at C5-6 requiring a surgical disc replacement surgery that took place in November 2010. 

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