Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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Consider the following scenario. You work at a Chicago manufacturing factory. One day the machine you operate becomes jammed. In order to try to remove the jammed material you remove the machine’s guard and place your hand inside. But as you do this the machine starts up and crushes your hand. You are now permanently disabled and unable to do your job. What are your legal options?
Because of Illinois worker’s compensation law you are limited to recover against your employer in the Illinois Industrial Commission and cannot bring a separate civil lawsuit directly against your employer. But if your injury at work involved a machine or product then you may be able to recover damages from the manufacturer in a product liability claim brought as a separate civil suit.

The most common product liability claim from work-related injuries is due to the product’s lack of safety features, such as a guard or an automatic shut-off that is activated when the guard was removed, or a release lever that kills the power instantly. When a product fails to include a reasonable safety feature that makes it unduly dangerous to its user then the manufacturer can be held liable for any injuries sustained while operating the machine.

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Chicago’s Roman Catholic Church has paid $12.6 million to settle 16 sexual abuse claims against 10 priests and a school principal. Over the past 30 years the Chicago Archdiocese has paid approximately $65 million towards settling 250 such claims against the clergy, most involving child victims. A few dozen more cases remain on the Chicago court’s docket.

Such sexual abuse cases against priests began surfacing in 1992 in Boston. Since that time the U.S. Catholic Church has paid almost $2 billion to settle these claims.

What is unique about the recent Chicago cases is that Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, agreed to release the transcript of his eight-hour deposition. According to the victims’ lawyer, “the release of [Cardinal George’s] deposition today is a significant step toward openness and transparency and helps the survivors and the church community in healing and recovery.” To date Cardinal George is the highest-ranking church official to ever give a legal deposition.

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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 a second replacement surgery as a result of the Illinois medical device liability.

Stryker Corp. moved to dismiss the complaint filed by Lenore because the 2-year statute of limitations had run when the case was filed in Chicago in 2005. In Illinois, typically the statute of limitations begins running from the date that the claimant should have known that there was a problem with the defective medical device. The Chicago district court found that in 2002 Lenore was aware that her hip problems were caused by a manufacturer’s defect.

In 2001, Lenore saw her orthopedic surgeon for left hip pain and was told that her hip replacement might last 15-20 years. In 2002, the same doctor determined that her pain was caused by osteolysis and from particles of plastic that had broken loose from the prosthetic hip. In 2003, the surgeon performed a second hip replacement surgery to replace the failed original prosthesis. After the surgery, the surgeon told Lenore that the osteolysis was worse than he had originally thought and that the original hip device had “advanced or catastrophic failure”.

Because of her surgeon’s discoveries during her procedure in January, 2002, the Illinois federal district court said that the plaintiff was on “inquiry notice” that her injury might have been wrongfully caused based on the surgeon’s explanation of the osteolysis and that particles of plastic from the prosthesis had gotten between that device and her hip bone.

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It’s no secret that insurance companies sometimes put their own interests above that of their customers. Even if you make all your premium payments on time and promptly fill out your forms, you might still struggle to obtain payments from your insurer. And while the practice of denying claims and benefits is nothing new, the methods are.

MetLife v. Glenn evaluates one of the new methods, specifically voiding a policy after a claim is filed and instead advising the insured to pursue benefits from other sources. Wanda Glenn sought judicial review after MetLife cancelled her disability benefits.

For two years Glenn had received disability benefits after being diagnosed with a heart condition and deemed unable to perform her job. During that time MetLife encouraged Glenn to apply for Social Security disability benefits. This required a review of her condition by an outside agency under stringent criteria. However, this agency found that Glenn not only was unable to perform her own job, but was unable to do any type of work- she was granted Social Security disability. Shortly thereafter her MetLife benefits came up for review. As a result of this review MetLife determined that Glenn was still unable to perform her old job, but was now capable of performing other jobs. Based on this determination MetLife cancelled her disability benefits.

The Supreme Court considered several factors when evaluating MetLife’s denial of benefits, including its conflict of interest. This conflict of interest was based on the fact that MetLife was authorized to determine whether a claimant was eligible for benefits and was also responsible for paying those benefits.

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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 your evidence? How do you make sure that your the jury understands your client’s story?
Photographs can be a very persuasive way to drive a point home to the jury at trial. For example, if you want to demonstrate the horrific nature of a car crash then nothing gets this across better than photographs of the totalled car. Or if you’re arguing that doctors at a local Chicago hospital dropped the ball and didn’t prevent or treat your client’s bed sores, then pictures of the exact size and nature of those sores will underscore how impossible they were to miss.

However, the argument against allowing such pictures is that they could sway the jury to the point that they ignore the facts before them and focus only on the visual story presented. It is up to the judge to ensure that both the plaintiff and defendant tell their story in a way that doesn’t unduly prejudice the jury against the other side, see Dicosola v. Bowman (342 Ill App 3d 530). To do so a judge will typically only allow evidence that is relevant to the case and try to keep out unnecessary theatrics.

But aren’t scene photographs and images of a car after a crash relevant to a case? Don’t they allow the jury to get a better sense of what actually happened and place themselves in the scene? So why would such photos ever be barred from evidence for not being relevant?

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The parents of 8-month-old Joshua Flax filed suit against DaimlerChrysler after their son was killed in a car accident involving their 1998 Dodge Caravan. The wrongful death case centered on the allegedly defective design of the minivan’s front seat backs. Jeremy Flax, et al. v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., et al.

Joshua Flax was in the back seat of the minivan when it was rear-ended. The impact caused the front seat to collapse and its passenger to strike Joshua in the head, fracturing his skull. No other passengers were seriously injured and all parties agreed that Joshua was only fatally injured because of the product liability of the collapsed seat.

In late 2004, a jury found DaimlerChrysler’s seats to be defective and unreasonably dangerous, awarding a total of $105,500,000 to Joshua’s parents. This amount was later reduced, but the verdict was upheld all the way through the Supreme Court.

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Doctors are trained to diagnose and treat symptoms of illness. Patients come to their doctors with preconceived notions of how they should be medically treated, knowledge gleaned from the plethora of medical information readily available to all on the Internet, books and magazines. More and more patients are finding a gap between their expectations and the reality of their doctor visits.

Some doctors admit that they are squeezed for time, pinched by the insurance company’s scrutiny of their submitted reimbursements and pushed to see more patients by their employers and/or partners. The system no longer allows for lengthy, one-on-one visits with your doctor. The result is that more and more patients report that they simply do not trust their physician.

But what can we do to force our doctor to focus on us? To assert our visit is important and demands his or her full attention and expertise? Do we need to lobby for different rules governing the system? Do we need to pay by the minute so that a physician will review our case until we are satisfied?
There is no need to go to such extremes. By adjusting how you, the patient, approaches the visit you can ensure that you are getting the most out of your doctor.

Patients should be encouraged to enter the exam room with a written list of questions for the doctor they are seeing. And you should insist that the doctor give the necessary time to answer each question. I know of several friends and family members who go to important medical consultations with written questions and a video camera to make sure the answers are well documented for further reflection or to allow for a comparative second or third opinion. Whatever method you use it is important that you are in control of your medical care.

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As the junior year came to an end, I knew I wanted to do something more with my summer than sleep in and hang out. With my future looming on the horizon, I also knew it was time to start mulling over many of the agonizing decisions facing me this fall.

The piles of college mail gathering dust on my kitchen counter, agonizing career-planning meetings with my counselor, and the cornucopia of job fairs taking place each weekend all had me thinking. Each time I ripped open another envelope, sat down for another discussion, or wandered aimlessly about the aisles of a fair, I felt hopelessly lost. How am I expected to choose my career path based on a few pamphlets or a couple pieces of advice? As a rising senior in a Chicago area high school, I finally realized that what I really needed was what hours in a high school classroom could never give me: hands-on experience.

That’s what landed me here, as a summer intern at Kreisman Law Offices in Chicago. I’d always been told I’d “make a great lawyer”, but most of the people telling me this had little to no experience in law, and were probably only remarking on several qualities they assumed to be the makings of a lawyer. Still, it sparked my interest.

To me law is an exciting field: one that was always changing, yet had a constant novel purpose. However, I also heard horror stories of lawyers acting as money-hungry, self-absorbed, and ruthless liars or cheaters. But I discovered that both the public’ and my images of the modern attorney are completely false. The word ‘lawyer’ is not one-size-fits-all. My internship here at Kreisman Law Offices gave me a crucial backstage pass to the real substance of law, and how it functions on a day-to-day basis.

My experience here can only be described as priceless. Sure, I picked up a general knowledge of the court system, a smattering of law vernacular, as well as basic job experience. And of course I also gained a fundamental understanding of the differences between different types of firms, lawyers, and courts. I was taught how to abstract depositions, research law, and use databases, all of which were great learning experiences.

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Antonio Galvan, uninsured, sued Northwestern Memorial Hospital once he discovered that he was charged twice as much as an insured patient would have been for the same services. He alleged that the Chicago hospital’s practice of differentiating between uninsured and insured patients constituted unfair and deceptive conduct under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act.

Plaintiff Galvan was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago by ambulance after being injured in an automobile accident. Upon his discharge 15 days later he was presented with a hospital bill for $87,033. In his claim against Northwestern he alleged that their practice of billing uninsured patients twice the amount of insured patients was unfair and deceptive.

When measuring unfairness in Galvan, the Illinois Appellate Court considered “(1) whether the practice offends public policy; (2) whether it is immoral, unethical, oppressive or unscrupulous; and (3) whether it causes substantial injury to consumers.”

According to the court, Galvan failed to consider an important fact in his arguments- that there is an obvious difference between an insured and uninsured patient and that it is therefore reasonable to treat them differently. An insured patient pays insurance premiums and in return is awarded a lower service rate. The hospital offers this lower rate because they are guaranteed payment from an insured patient and his/her insurance company. Whereas there is no such guarantee from an uninsured patient.

An insured patient routinely pays for medical expenses in the form of insurance payments and is rewarded with reduced hospital bills. But an uninsured patient doesn’t have the added expense of insurance payments so is hit with a larger bill. The court felt this was a fair practice and that the amount charged by Northwestern did not qualify as “exorbitant”.

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Chicago medical malpractice lawyer, Bob Kreisman, attended the American Association of Justice annual convention in Philadelphia from July 12 through July 16, 2008. The meetings were held in Philadelphia’s Center City, in the shadow of its famous city hall. The conference had seminars for every field of trial practice.
For those who were particularly interested in the upcoming elections, there were luncheons, town hall meetings and late night discussions. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri spoke with Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius. Pennsylvania’s governor Ed Rendell and Senator Arlin Specter, also of Pennsylvania, drew large crowds to different events. Also, nominees for both the House of Representatives and Senate were on hand for speaking engagements. Minnesota’s democratic hopeful Al Franken spoke on Monday afternoon to a packed house with Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana.

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