Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog

Computer manufacturer is the defendant in a recently-filed personal injury lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the personal injury lawsuit claim that IBM caused cancer in and around a New York town where the company was founded. According to the complaint, the IBM factory released a toxic plume from 1924 through 2002 into the groundwater that also led to the contamination of the air and soil. According to the personal injury lawsuit, this pollution led to personal injury and wrongful death, including congenital heart defects in children and kidney cancer in adults.

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Posted In: Toxic Torts , Wrongful Death

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Sixty-six people were injured Wednesday after hazardous chemical spill at a Chicagoland chemical spill. The accident occurred at Yellow Transportation around 10:20 Wednesday night when 30 and 40 gallons of a high-concentration of hydrogen peroxide leaked from a 275 gallon plastic container and reacted with materials in the area to produce a hazardous gas. 21 of the 66 people injured in the incident were taken to nearby hospitals for medical treatment. The remaining 45 were treated on scene. There is no word yet whether the leak was caused by human error or negligence. As of now, no personal injury law suits have been filed in this matter.

For entire article, click here.

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Posted In: Toxic Torts

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A Chicago man died Sunday after being exposed to deadly fumes at Chicago’s famous Bloomers Chocolate Factory on 600 W. Kinzi. Officials from the Chicago Fire Department stated that Geraldo Castillo, 30, of the 1700 block of West Olive Avenue in the Edgewater neighborhood was taken in critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. A Fire Department spokesperson said that an unknown chemical substance somehow mixed into the chocolate and triggered the deadly chemical reaction. In addition to Castillo’s death, three other workers were injured after being exposed to the hazardous gas and taken to area hospitals. There is no word yet how the accident occurred or whether Castillo’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. The factory may also be liable to the three injured workers for personal injury law suits or workers compensation claims.

For the entire article click here

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Posted In: Toxic Torts

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WR Grace & Co., Inc. has reached a proposed settlement of all current and future asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits against the company in a move the chemical company hopes will allow it to emerge from bankruptcy.

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Posted In: Asbestos and Mesothelioma , Toxic Torts

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The historic Fen-Phen settlement is now valued at $7.5 billion according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys managing the settlement payout. Fen-Phen was a popular diet drug and is the most notable of any prescription drug liability and injury suit. Fen-Phen is actually a combination of two drugs, fenfluramine (Pondimin) and Phentermine. Phentermine is still available today and is sold under several different brand names.

The Fen-Phen class action is unique because it offered a three-tiered system of initial opt-outs, intermediate opt-outs, and preserved a back-end option for injured plaintiffs to sue if they develop heart valve disease by as late as 2015, among other new ideas. This new system was designed to avoid the pitfalls seen in previous asbestos and GM Truck class action suits.

For the full article, click here.

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Posted In: Asbestos and Mesothelioma , Products liability , Toxic Torts , pharmaceuticals

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Personal injury attorneys recently filed a $110 million personal injury lawsuit on behalf of an Illinois farm worker injured by a meniscal transplant surgery. CryoLife Inc., a major corporation that supplies human tissue for transplants, is being accused of providing contaminated cadaver material for the operation. Upon his return to Illinois, the farm equipment operator will no longer be able to work and will need to regularly take medication for pain for the rest of his life. CryoLife recently settled a different lawsuit with a man that died three days after he was implanted with the company's tissue. The personal injury lawyers in this more recent suit allege that the two mens' infections resulted from the "same deadly organism." The company plans to fight the product liability accusations "vigorously" based on the inevitable safety problems when human tissue is used in surgeries.

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Posted In: Products liability , Toxic Torts , pharmaceuticals

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A young woman was diagnosed with leukemia. How could this happen? As it turns out, she was an instructor in a beauty college. For several years she had worked with various chemical products. It appears that these products caused her to develop her disease. For years scientists have known that the chemical Benzene causes leukemia. What we are just now learning is that this chemical was in thousands of consumer products. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with AML leukemia, please seek legal help.

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Posted In: Products liability , Toxic Torts

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A new group of mesothelioma victims are claiming that second hand exposure to asbestos caused their illness. Lawsuits have arisen as victims and their families have begun to realize that asbestos at a workplace can be transferred into the home. A man has claimed that his wife died of mesothelioma because she regularly washed his work clothes which were carrying asbestos. The man was awarded $3 million. Other courts have produced mixed results as this new category of personal injury lawsuits is formed.

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Posted In: Asbestos and Mesothelioma , Current Issues , Toxic Torts , Wrongful Death

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A crew of six New York prison inmates and two corrections officers were exposed to asbestos, a carcinogen, during a construction job requiring them to tear up floor tiles. After the crew and officers had been exposed to the asbestos for over a year, the construction site's environmental engineer warned of the danger. The tiles were tested and found to contain four times the amount of allowable asbestos at a construction site without requiring special removal teams. The officers are taking the city to court and the inmates are also considering suing for damages. Mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, is almost always tied to asbestos exposure and occurs in the membrane lining of the lungs or abdomen. The symptoms of Mesothelioma do not typically appear until decades after the initial exposure.

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Posted In: Asbestos and Mesothelioma , Current Issues , Land Owner liability , Toxic Torts

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Certain cans of hot dog chili sauce have been linked to four cases of botulism. The last cases of botulism in the U.S. date back to the 1970s. Botulism is caused by a toxin made by a bacterium and is a muscle-paralyzing disease. The paralysis can lead to the inability to breathe unless supported by a ventilator or eventually death. Symptoms of botulism include double or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth and muscle weakness that moves down the body. It is important to discard all of the recalled cans and not open them. Even if the toxin just contacts your skin, you could become ill.

Click here for a full list of recalled products and more information

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Posted In: Food Poisoning , Toxic Torts

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The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and The Federal Drug Administration have issued an alert regarding an anesthetic called Propofol and marketed as Diprivan. After receiving the drug, a number of patients have complained of chills, fever and body aches. If you or someone you know has been given Propofol general anesthesia or sedation and experienced fever, chills, and body aches or other symptoms afterward, please report the incident to the MedWatch program. Anyone exhibiting those symptoms after use of the drug should be tested for bacterial sepsis. No product liability lawsuits have been filed as of yet.

Click here to view the FDA alert

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Posted In: Current Issues , Products liability , Toxic Torts , pharmaceuticals

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The Ohio Supreme Court recently declined to review a decision protecting lead paint manufacturers. The earlier decision rejected the plaintiff's claims because they could not identify which specific former lead paint manufacturer's paint was in which particular buildings. By declining to review the decision, the state of Ohio has followed the lead of New Jersey and Missouri high courts, which denied similar attempts to get former manufacturers of lead paint to help pay the costs of clean up and removal.

Click here for the full article
Click here for the prior post on the New Jersey decision
Click here for the prior post on the Missouri decision

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Posted In: Lead Products , Products liability , Toxic Torts

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An Illinois councilman admitted last Friday to asbestos removal violations and failure to notify the Illinois EPA. The councilman knew that a building contained asbestos and asbestos covered pipes and decided not to take the proper precautions to prevent an environmental contamination. The councilman told contractors that there was asbestos in the building but that it was not the "dangerous kind." Instead of providing respirators, as required, the councilman only provided paper masks for the job. In addition, because the workers did not believe that the asbestos was harmful, they simply threw the asbestos covered pipes out the window during the renovation project, releasing harmful asbestos into the air. The councilman now faces an additional 15 months in prison for these violations. Currently, the councilman is serving a 21-month prison sentence for election fraud.

Click here for the full article.

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Posted In: Asbestos and Mesothelioma , Toxic Torts

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In a decision that mirrors a recent move by the Missouri Supreme Court, the New Jersey Supreme Court also found in favor of paint manufacturers. Several towns and townships in New Jersey were suing manufacturers, hoping to get the companies who made the lead paint to pay the costs of removing the toxic substance. A similar result was reached when the city of Chicago tried to get lead paint manufacturers to defray the costs in treating children with exposure to the toxins.

Click here for the full story.

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Posted In: Injuries to Minors and Children , Land Owner liability , Lead Products , Products liability , Toxic Torts

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In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that companies who voluntarily clean up pollution can sue to get other responsible parties to pay their share of the clean up costs. Significantly, a company that pays for clean up will not have to wait for EPA involvement before it would be able to get those other resposible parties to pay their share. The opinion should help reduce delays in the clean up of industrial pollution. Furthermore, the opinion will incentivize clean up of pollution that might not otherwise have occurred.

Continue reading "Supreme Court protects incentives for voluntary pollution clean-up" »

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Posted In: Toxic Torts

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The Missouri Supreme Court recently ruled against St. Louis in the city’s attempts to force lead paint manufacturers to contribute to the cost of lead paint cleanup. Although lead paint has been banned since 1978 because of its tendency to cause health and developmental problems in children, many older homes still contain it. In a divided ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the city could not hold the manufacturers responsible because an inability to positively identify the paint used in a given home. The majority ruling claimed that because the city’s lawsuit was not a public health matter, and because the city cannot positively identify the products used, the city should pay for cleanup. The dissenting opinion, however, stated that the case is a public health issue because the paint is hazardous, and all manufacturers of the paint should have to contribute, regardless of whether the paint could be identified in certain homes.

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Posted In: Building safety , Land Owner liability , Lead Products , Products liability , Toxic Torts

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The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill with the chemical security provision will allow local communities to know whether a neighboring hazardous plant is safe. If the corporation who owns the plant is acting negligently, this bill will enable states to file lawsuits against said corporations. This will allow local and state governments to protect their citizens from illegal waste dumping into nearby water sources preventing harmful side-effects.

To take action please click here and write your local representative!

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Posted In: Current Issues , Toxic Torts

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