Fortunately, this fire appears to have been contained to the one unit and did not spread to other parts. If residents’ accounts of non-functioning smoke detectors and fire alarms are true, this fire could have led to tragic results. We will keep watching as this story unfolds.

Click here to read the Lake Effect News story on the Uptown fire.

The injury attorneys at Levin & Perconti are familiar with what tragedies occur when smoke detectors fail. The Illinois fire injury attorneys represented families of six children who died in a tragic apartment fire in 2006 in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Two other children were severely injured in the fire. The Chicago landlords of the apartment building failed to ensure that the unit had functioning smoke detectors. This violated the Chicago Municipal Code. In 2007, the injury attorneys obtained a $6 million settlement on behalf of the families of the Rogers Park apartment fire victims in their lawsuit against the building owners and managers.

To read more about the 2007 wrongful death settlement, click here.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune outlined the landlord’s alleged murder plan that led to the deadly Illinois fire. According to Cook County prosecutors, the landlord intended to burn down one of his Cicero apartment buildings and collect on the $250,000 insurance policy. He was planning to move to West Virginia and make himself hard to find without a telephone or mail service. He is alleged to have hired the Cicero building’s maintenance man to carry out the plot to torch the wood structure during the day when the children were at school and women were at work. Apparently, the handyman didn’t listen – and set fire at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday.

Unfortunately, the Chicago injury attorneys are not unfamiliar with stories of deadly Illinois fires. The Illinois wrongful death attorneys represented the families of six children who died in a tragic apartment fire on Chicago’s north side. Two other children had sustained severe burns in the fire. The landlords of the building where the deadly fire occurred failed to have proper and working smoke detectors in violation of the Chicago Municipal Code. The Chicago attorneys obtained a $6 million settlement on behalf of the families of the Chicago fire victims.

Click here to read more about the deadly Illinois fire.

The Chicago Tribune noted that many of the Illinois nursing homes where sexual attacks occurred were operated with insufficient nursing home staff. Mr. Levin replied that substandard nursing home staffing is the cause of the majority of Illinois nursing home neglect and safety issues. Mr. Levin added that some nursing home owners focus on census and revenue over the safety of their nursing home residents. In order to end the incessant violence in Chicago nursing homes, we must address the issue of nursing home staffing.

As highlighted in a blog post from earlier this week, Illinois elected officials are stepping up their push for nursing home safety, but there is more that we can do. Readers are encouraged to contact your state representatives to demand legislation providing adequate staffing standards for Illinois nursing homes. You can find out who your state representative is by clicking here.

To read the Letter to the Editor that Steven M. Levin submitted to the Chicago Tribune, click here.

Chicago police have joined forces with investigators and medical experts from the Illinois Attorney General’s office to find unregistered felons and sex offenders living in Illinois nursing homes. When visiting Illinois nursing homes unannounced, authorities are also interviewing nursing home residents and nursing home staff at the Illinois facilities with histories of serious resident safety breaches. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is also working to introduce a comprehensive package of nursing home safety-reform bills in the near future.

The nursing home injury attorneys at Levin & Perconti are glad that vulnerable nursing home residents are finally getting the attention they need and deserve. For too long, residents have been neglected, being abused under the radar. Recently, Governor Quinn’s Nursing Home Safety Task Force completed a 52-page plan to overhaul our state of Illinois’s troubled nursing home system. The task force was formed after a Tribune investigation documented rapes, attacks, and murders at Illinois and Chicago nursing homes that serve the area’s poorest residents. Particularly troublesome in Illinois is its reliance on nursing homes to house younger psychiatric patients, including more than 3,000 with felony records. This is an issue that Levin & Perconti has often highlighted in its Illinois nursing home abuse blog. More than a dozen early nursing home safety bills have already been introduced by nursing home advocates and the nursing home industry.

Click here to read the full Chicago Tribune article about the increased safety push.

Despite reports of dangerous Toyota errors, the company was quiet and blamed driver error or faulty floor mats. Similarly, federal regulators did not press the company. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration opened and closed half a dozen investigations without any significant action on the product liability.

The writer of the editorial addressed that United States court system and the role that injury attorneys play in it provides an early warning system, alerting regulators and news organizations to product hazards that the public would likely not be aware of. Courts also get responses from manufacturers who might have been able to fend off federal investigators if they decided to investigate product concerns. The writer of the article summed it up when he said it’s time to recognize once more that litigation over dangerous products and services can avert countless wrongful deaths and personal injuries.

To read the full editorial, click here.

In part because of insufficient government oversight, lethal defects have recently gone uncorrected for years in the Toyota recall. Affecting various models, we have now learned that car owner complaints of product liability issues were either minimized or ignored by Toyota and the regulatory government agencies that were responsible for policing the company. One review of federal records found as many as 2,600 consumer product complaints of sudden acceleration over a 10 year period. And, only now has any product recall been issued. According to CBS, released internal documents now indicate that Toyota was tracing its problem to its software as far back as 2005.

Simply put, the government is overburdened following the Bush administration’s weakening of regulatory agencies’ power through cutting funding and personnel in addition to a massive work load. A case in point is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its caseload extended to more than 11,000 existing drugs, 100 new drugs yearly and a products ranging from foods to vaccines that account for almost 25% of all consumer spending. Trial attorneys, such as the product liability attorneys at Levin & Perconti, act as a check and help to give a voice to consumers who have been ignored by companies and the government. Product liability lawsuits have played a crucial role in ensuring public safety and encouraging manufacturers to put safety, instead of profits, first.

Click here to read the entire piece on the need for trial attorneys.

Mr. Flowers set the background by informing readers that this was the third time the issue of caps was before the court and the third time that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the citizens’ right to seek just compensation. Following the decision, those who side with the insurance industry have had an unfavorable reaction to the Illinois Supreme Court ruling and in opposing its decision have spread fiction and chosen to ignore the facts of caps. Opposers state that the absence of caps caused an exodus of doctors from Illinois; however, the truth is that since 1963, the number of doctors in Illinois has increased.

Another piece of fiction that is often spread to readers statewide and physicians statewide is that insurance premiums for doctors rose because of the lack of caps on damages for medical mistakes. The truth is that the rise in insurance premiums has more to do with insurance company greed – the state’s largest medical malpractice insurer recorded profits of $124.2 million from 2006 through 2008. The little decrease that happened when the caps were in place occurred because of insurance reform and state mandates.

Most people often forget is that compensation for victims is not a “prize.” Illinois medical malpractice victims suffer from the medical mistakes for the rest of their lives; they deserve to seek justice. Mr. Flowers addresses that the solution to rising insurance premiums for physicians will happen by reforming the insurance industry. Reforms work and should be re-enacted so that doctors are not faced with unconscionable increases in their premiums while insurance companies make enormous profits. When insurance companies are held accountable, health care in Illinois will improve.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, led by Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, has reported that it is also reviewing the car crash, but no criminal charges have been filed against the driver yet. Witness accounts state that the driver was traveling between 80 to 90 miles per hour, hitting the Honda so hard that it knocked the car accident toddler victim out of the car seat he was fastened into and into a rear window. The friends were also ejected from the vehicle. The parents of the wrongful death victim are trying to cope for the time being. Levin & Perconti is keeping the parents and those coping with this horrific loss in our thoughts.

Click here to read more about the car accident lawsuit.

The Chicago personal injury attorneys at Levin & Perconti file negligence lawsuits often on behalf of our clients who have been injured or who have loved ones who have been hurt. Negligence is a party’s failure to use reasonable care. In other words, it is the doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do. This lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs at the Cook County courthouse contends that the Nicor gas company committed negligence in not ensuring that the occupants were safe, something the plaintiffs contend that a reasonably prudent person would have done.

To read more about the gas company lawsuit, click here.

The wrongful death lawsuit has four counts, which claim wrongful death negligence, survival action negligence, wrongful death related to willful and wanton conduct, and survival related to willful and wanton conduct. Each of the counts seek in excess of $50,000. To better understand the meaning of the lawsuit, the attorneys at Levin & Perconti wish to explain some of the terms of the wrongful death lawsuit. First, negligence is a party’s failure to use reasonable care; it is the doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do. Further, willful and wanton conduct is the conscious and intentional disregard of an indifference to the rights and safety of others, which the defendant party knows or should know is likely to result in injury, damage, or other harm. Thus, the wrongful death lawsuit against the school district alleges that the school acted with a conscious disregard for the 10 year old’s safety or at the very least failed to use reasonable care.

Click here to read the Chicago Sun-Times article on the wrongful death lawsuit. ht

This golf accident occurred in August 2005 when a Naperville man hit a West Chicago woman on the head. The Naperville Illinois man was participating in an annual DuPage, Illinois County Republican Day. The golf injury lawsuit was filed in 2007 and alleged that the Naperville man was negligent. The injury plaintiff contends that she continues to suffer migraine headaches as a result of the golf accident. The Illinois Golf & Country Club is also a part of the golf lawsuit, which is seeking more than $50,000 in damages.

To read more about the golf injury lawsuit ruling, click here.