Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog

The family of a man who died after a kickboxing match has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the gym and trainer who managed the match. The wrongful death victim was only 27 years of age and had fought in a competition featured by the gym. The victim’s family alleges that the owner of the gym is at fault for the victim’s death because he should not have been allowed to fight in the match. The family says that the wrongful death victim had received personal injuries a few days earlier in a practice. The wrongful death lawsuit claims that the 27 year-old victim suffered repeated trauma to his head during the fight, which aggravated that prior personal injury. The family is seeking lawsuit damages in excess of $25,000. The owner of the gym’s husband said that he had never seen the victim practice at the gym, but added that the wrongful death victim’s family often visited the facility’s paintball range. He also stated that he believed the victim entered the competition as an independent fighter.

Wrongful death lawsuits may be filed when a death has been caused by the fault of another person. In addition to the incident described above, wrongful deaths also include deaths caused by drunk driving, a defective or dangerous product, the construction of an unsound structure or building, or failing to diagnose a fatal disease. The Chicago wrongful death lawyers at Levin & Perconti have successfully handled numerous wrongful death lawsuits and recovered millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements for victims and their families.

More information on the wrongful death lawsuit is available at KSDK.com.

During the winter of 2008, tragically after Christmas, the strangulation death of a child by a Tots in Mind crib tent became the first to be investigated by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. According to the CPSC, the child – who was two years of age – was found hanging with his neck entrapped between the play yard frame and the metal base rod of the tent that had been partially tied by pieces of nylon rope and partially attached by clips. The family of the wrongful death victim had improvised the nylon ties because the child was able to pop off the clips. The crib tent attaches securely to all standard cribs and includes a large soft zipper to open and close. In July, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Tots in Mind crib tent manufacturer finally announced a product recall featuring a repair remedy for the attachment clips.

One product safety blog highlights that this case points out two weaknesses in the regulatory framework meant to ensure the safety of juvenile products. First, this case involved an entirely too long gap between the time when the product was found to be hazardous and the product recall. Part of the reason that the product recalls take so long is because the CPSC is always pushing to get the company to agree to do a product recall. However, the CPSC can alert the public through product warnings, prior to issuing a recall, which would inform the public and hopefully prevent further harm. Additionally, this case highlights the difficulty in dealing with baby products that are not encompassed in the CPSC regulations and are not manufactured to any voluntary or mandatory product safety standard.

To read more about the crib tent product recall, follow the hyperlink.

Illinois nursing home abuse lawyers Steven M. Levin and Scott J. Richard of Chicago personal injury firm Levin & Perconti filed an Illinois wrongful death lawsuit against Hinsdale nursing home ManorCare Health Services in the Circuit Court of Cook County on Wednesday. The Chicago nursing home lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of the family of a 74 year-old woman who died of acute renal failure caused by dehydration less than one month after being admitted to the nursing home’s special dementia unit. The Illinois Department of Public Health has cited the nursing home for improper care.

The Illinois wrongful death victim suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, but was ambulatory, active, and alert. Upon admission to Manorcare, the 74 year-old woman was happy; but within forty-eight hours, she was prescribed Ativan, a sedative, and four days later Seroquel, an anti-psychotic. Nonetheless, the staff at the Illinois nursing home assured the woman’s family that she would not be overly sedated. They also assigned the victim to a wheelchair with a restraint, explaining to the family that it was only a temporary measure until the 74 year-old woman became comfortable at the facility. However, in the days following the admission, the 74 year-old woman’s family noticed that she was excessively drowsy and confused. Her condition quickly declined; she began losing weight and having trouble swallowing.

Continue reading "Levin & Perconti files Illinois wrongful death lawsuit against Manorcare in Hinsdale" »

As those of us in Chicago are well aware, Transformers 3 has been forming in the Chicagoland area for the past month. Unfortunately, the filming brought tragic news earlier this week when a movie extra was hospitalized after suffering a serious head injury during a stunt. The stunt was being filmed in northwest Indiana, according to police. The female extra received the personal injuries around 7:00 p.m. when an object went through the windshield of her 2006 car on Cline Avenue in Hammond, Indiana, just northeast of Chicago. She was an extra in the movie, but was not a member of the trained specialized stunt personnel.

The car hit a concrete median barrier and continued for almost a mile before stopping. The vehicle involved in the workplace stunt during the Transformers 3 filming had extensive damage to the driver’s side; the Illinois personal injury victim was airlifted to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois. The film crew stopped filming after the personal injury accident.

Although it is unclear whether the extra was employed by the filmers or was working as an independent contractor, the Chicago personal injury lawyers at Levin & Perconti want to remind you that you have a right to a safe and healthful workplace. Those who suffer personal injuries on the job may be eligible for benefits under workers’ compensation coverage.

More information is available on the extra's personal injuries at Chicago Sun-Times.

A wrongful death lawsuit was filed after an infant son died because he was exposed to deadly chemicals escaping from the BP refinery after the oil spill. The wrongful death lawsuit seeks $10 billion from BP. The mother of the infant victim states the six-month-old son died in June from symptoms connected with pneumonia, which the wrongful death lawsuit alleges were worsened by lengthy exposure to the more than 500,000 pounds of chemicals released at the refinery between April 6 and May 16.

The BP wrongful death lawsuit states that while his mother worked, the infant was cared for at his aunt’s house, which is a mile from the refinery. The emissions allegedly began when the hydrogen compressor in the unit went offline. The plaintiff claims that after the chemical release began the child began to have a runny nose, a bad cough, and mucus in his eyes. The victim’s mother states that she took him to three area hospitals and physicians at each facility were unable to find the cause of his illness.

Wrongful death is a legal term for a death that has been caused by the fault of another person. Damages can be recovered in wrongful death lawsuits that include expense associated with the death, lost benefits, pain, suffering, or mental anguish suffered by the survivors, and loss of companionship. Punitive damages are also occasionally available. In addition to the wrongful death lawsuit described above, a personal injury class action lawsuit has already been filed against BP over the alleged chemical leak on behalf of thousands of oil refinery workers and residents who lived near the facility.

Read more about the BP wrongful death lawsuit by clicking the link.

A new report issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) researchers found that in a one year period, the costs associated with personal injuries from car crashes exceeded $99 billion. The cost of direct medical care accounts for $17 billion. The total annual cost amounts to almost $500 for every licensed driver in the United States. The yearly costs of fatal and non-fatal crash related personal injuries totaled $70 billion for people riding in motor vehicles. Every 10 seconds, someone in the United States is treated in an emergency department for car accident-related injuries. Plus, almost 40,000 people die from these personal injuries each year. The director of CDC’s Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention announced that this study highlights the magnitude from the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost perspective and the results are staggering. The CDC researchers used 2005 data to compile the report.

In Chicago, we unfortunately hear news weekly of car accidents where personal injuries or wrongful deaths result. Just this weekend, police were questioning a female driver involved in a Chicago car accident that killed a 39-year old Chicago man. Another fatal crash occurred in the south suburb of Frankfort over the weekend. A man was killed Thursday night when the Kawasaki motorcycle he was driving slid under a truck. A preliminary autopsy showed that the Illinois man died of multiple personal injuries in the accident. Illinois state police said that the injury victim failed to stop at the intersection and yield the right of way to the truck driven by another man.

Visit the Chicago Tribune online to learn more about the CDC car accident cost study.

Two families have agreed to settle their wrongful death lawsuits stemming from the crash of the February 2009 Continental Airlines crash that killed all 49 individuals on board the plane and one on the ground. According to a statement released by the family of the wrongful death victim’s plaintiff’s attorney, “Some families, when they receive a significant offer, would choose to take it and move on. Most of the families will hang in and go the distance until a trial to get the sort of numbers we think are appropriate.” Wrongful death lawsuit settlement terms are confidential.

The other wrongful death lawsuits are set for trial in March 2012 in federal court. According to recent documents, the crew’s failure to monitor airspeed, which slowed enough to trigger the stall warning, contributed to the airplane accident. Other contributing factors were found to be unnecessary conversation between the pilots and the Captain’s failure to manage the flight.

Wrongful death is a legal term that means that the victim’s death has been caused by the fault of another individual. In addition to situations like the airplane accident described above, deaths caused by drunk driving, a defective or dangerous product, failing to diagnose a fatal disease, or the construction of an unsound structure of a building may be considered as “wrongful deaths.” Wrongful death lawyers generally filed wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of family members or beneficiaries of the decedent. In some situations, these wrongful death claims are filed in order to obtain monetary damages to cover the earnings the deceased person would have provided.

For more information on the wrongful death lawsuit settlements, read the article at Business Week.

An Illinois man is seeking a cash settlement from the suburban city of Zion and five Zion police officers for Illinois personal injuries sustained in addition to alleged violations of his civil rights. The plaintiff, a forty one year old man, claims that Illinois police officers in the city of Zion injured him near his residence when they Tasered him and allegedly manufactured evidence against him in relation a fight near his house. The Illinois injury plaintiff was acquitted of the criminal misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest and has since filed a federal lawsuit seeking monetary damages against the city. The Illinois injury plaintiff is seeking monetary damages including punitive damages, costs, and attorney fees. He alleges that the arresting officers are guilty of false arrest, conspiracy, excess force and battery.

The Chicago personal injury lawyers of Levin & Perconti are familiar with damages in injury lawsuits and want our readers to notice that the Tasered Illinois man is seeking punitive damages in the lawsuit. Punitive damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the personal injury lawsuit or other lawsuit. Although the purpose of the punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will in fact receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award. Punitive damages are awarded only in special cases, usually under tort law in cases like our injury attorneys do, where the defendant’s conduct was egregious.

More information about the civil rights lawsuit is available at the Lake County News-Sun.

In the latest update regarding product liability and harmful pharmaceutical interactions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that it is investigating the possibility that the combination Parkinson’s drug called Stalevo may increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in elderly patients who are taking the drug. Stalevo is an anti-parkinsonian dopaminergic combination medication, combined of carbidopa, levodopa, and entacapone, that treats Parkinson’s disease. The drug is manufactured by Finnish drugmaker Orion Corporation and is marked by Swiss-based Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Stalevo is currently used to treat adult patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease in two scenarios: to substitute with equivalent strength of each of the three components or to replace immediate-release therapy when patients experience the signs and symptoms of end-of-dose “wearing off.”

FDA urged patients not to stop taking the drug, but warned patients to let their physicians know if the patients have risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The first indication of product liability risk for Stalevo came from a clinical trial called STRIDE-PD, according to LA Times. The average age of the patient was 60 years of age and the trial that exposed the risks lasted an average of 2.7 years. The study’s results found seven heart attacks and one death.

The results of the clinical trial were combined by the FDA with results from fourteen other trials totaling about 4800 patients. With the wider patient pool, the analysis showed twenty-seven adverse product reactions of heart attacks, strokes, or deaths for a statistically significant increased risk of 146%. When the data from the trial was not included, the increased risk was only 67% and it was not statistically significant. The FDA is continuing to look into the significance of the clinical trial results.

Click the link to the LA Times to read more about the FDA product liability warnings.

The State of Illinois formerly provided its state citizens with useful and valuable information and detailed histories of its state’s doctors, including vital information such as whether the Illinois physician was convicted of a crime, fired by a hospital, or forced to make Illinois medical malpractice payments within the previous five years. As one would expect, many individuals in Illinois concerned about their physicians’ abilities frequently visited the Illinois physician information website. During the two years in which the information was posted, the Illinois physician profiles generated 130,000 clicks per week.

Unfortunately, access to the Illinois physician profiles came to a halt earlier this year when the state of Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation removed them from its website and locked them. As Chicago Tribune describes it, this is the latest chapter in a long political battle that has pitted Illinois patient advocates against the lobbyists who represent Illinois hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies.

Now, the only information available to the public is whether the Illinois regulatory agency has previously disciplined the physician. One state legislator explained that we had a useful and powerful tool to protect patients and now it is gone; Representative Mary Flowers added that we should mandate that the state of Illinois provide this critical consumer health information. Patients’ rights advocates and Illinois medical malpractice attorneys explained that similar websites have proved popular in other states where they receive more than 800,000 hits a year. But, any effort in Illinois needs to face tough competition from the Illinois State Medical Society, which lobbies on behalf of doctors and has helped defeat similar medical malpractice protection bills.

To read more about the Illinois medical malpractice website and its removal, visit the Chicago Tribune.

As most of the readers of our Illinois personal injury lawyer blog know, texting in Illinois while driving can get you pulled over and ticketed by police in Illinois. And, Chicago drivers have known that talking and driving on the cell phone can similarly result in such penalties. Now, our south suburban readers need to know that chatting on your cell phone in Midlothian or Park Forest can get you curbed as well.

The Southtown Star has reported that officials in those villages have recently barred driving and using a cell phone without a hands-free device within their borders. Like Chicago, Midlothian and Park Forest are “hands free” communities. Its an effort centered on avoiding Illinois car accidents that officials said are more likely to happen while drivers are using their cell phones. Enforcement of the hands-free laws in Midlothian and Park Forest are just the beginning. Pulling over drivers for using cell phones is now considered a primary offense. In other words, you do not have to be committing some other traffic offense to be pulled over for using a hand-held device.

Recent statistics have shown that talking on a cell phone causes nearly 25% of all Illinois car accidents. Four out of every five accidents are attributed to distracted drivers whereas one out of every three accidents are attributed to drunk drivers. In 2002, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis calculated that 2,600 people die every year as a result of using cell phones while driving and another 330,000 receive personal injuries. Drivers talking on cell phones were 18% slower to react to brake lights.

To read more about the south suburban texting bans, read the article at the Southtown Star.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced several product recalls this month and the month is not even over. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products and frequently announces product recalls. First, in cooperation with the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Circus World has recalled wireless video baby monitors due to overheating hazard. Wiring in the baby monitor camera can overheat and emit smoke, posing a burn hazard to consumers. Second, P. Graham Dunn in cooperation with the U.S. CPSC has recalled nearly 500 wooden toy rattles, which pose a serious choking hazard to young children. Third, the U.S. CPSC and Asurion have voluntarily recalled about 470,000 counterfeit Blackberry-branded cell phone batteries in refurbished devices; the batteries can overheat, posing burn and fire hazards.

Additionally, the US CPSC and LG Electronics have reannounced the Goldstar and Comfort-Aire dehumidifier recall, which affects about 98,000 dehumidifiers. The power connector for the dehumidifer’s compressor can short circuit and pose serious fire and burn hazards to consumers. Another fire hazard product recall involved the Bosch Thermotechnology Boiler Survey Kit. The recall affects about 1500 service kit for gas-fired boilers. The use of a silver-covered gas pipe adapter included in the service kit can lead to gas leakage, which can pose a fire or explosion hazard to consumers. Miami Breaker, Inc. has also voluntarily recalled products due to fire hazard. Their product recall involves about 43,600 counterfeit “Square D” circuit breakers, which can fail to trip when they are overloaded.

To read more about recent product recalls, please visit the CPSC website.