Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog

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.

Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc is set to pay roughly $198 million dollars to settle about 17,500 product liability lawsuits. The product liability lawsuits alleged that AstraZeneca’s antipsychotic drug Seroquel causes some users to develop diabetes. AstraZeneca had previously agreed to pay at least $55 million dollars to resolve more than 5,500 lawsuits alleging that the company knew that Seroquel could cause diabetes and failed to adequately warn patients. The earlier agreements to settle are part of the 17,500 product liability settlements. The Financial Times reported that the product liability settlement stems from court ordered mediation. And, the Wall Street Journal reported that analysts have described the settlement figure as relatively small.

Seroquel is an antipsychotic drug used in the treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, insomnia, and anxiety disorders. Annual sales of Seroquel are approximately $4.7 billion worldwide and $2.9 billion in the U.S. The most common side effect of the drug is sedation and other side effects include tachycardia, abnormal liver tests, dizziness, upset stomach, substantial weight gain, a stuffy nose, akathisia, and increased paranoia. The rare, but life-threatening, neuroleptic malignant syndrome may also result from use of the drug.

In October 2009, AstraZeneca reported reaching a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of Seroquel. One of the investigations related to certain physicians who participated in clinical trials and the other involved off-label promotion of the drug. Aggressive marketing resulted in Seroquel being increasingly used for children and elderly people for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Physicians are permitted to prescribe any approved drug for off-label uses.

Read more about the product liability settlement by visiting the Wall Street Journal.

The Chicago nursing home lawyers at Levin & Perconti were happy to know that for-profit Chicago nursing home operators were finally issued a stinging reprimand from a federal judge this week. The judge called the misleading Chicago nursing homes out for using “scare tactics” to persuade psychiatric patients to remain in nursing home facilities rather than moving to supportive community housing that specializes in serving the mentally ill. The federal ruling was made public this week and is directly related to a landmark proposed Illinois court settlement. Illinois authorities in the court settlement promised to offer supportive community-based housing and treatment to nearly 4500 psychiatric patients that are currently living in two dozen large nursing homes known as Institutions for Mental Diseases (“IMDs”). But, Chicago nursing home operators worried about their profits recently distributed “information sheets” to their residents and residents’ families asserting that the proposed settlement lacks details. The information sheet also scares the residents to believe that the settlement could strip away protections for individuals who leave the Illinois nursing home facilities, implying that some could be left hungry, homeless, and without care.

The judge ordered the Illinois nursing homes to stop distributing the “information sheets.” The judge stated that: “implications that those transferred to a community setting would be left without housing, food, or medical care … are misleading in that the settlement provides that the community placements are to include provisions for such.” The judge also cited many other claims in the “information sheets” that he described as inaccurate and incendiary. In a very strong demand, the judge ordered the Illinois nursing home operators to stop contacting the psychiatric patients without permission from the attorneys representing the mentally ill patients involved in the lawsuit.

More information about the judge’s ruling reprimanding the Illinois nursing homes is available at the Chicago Tribune.

A personal injury lawsuit settlement has been reached in one of the hundreds of personal injury lawsuits filed against Yamaha and its Rhino utility-terrain vehicle (UTV) for saety problems and product liability concerns. This is the first successful case against Yahama in connection to the UTV product liability problems. The injury victim in the settlement filed the injury lawsuit after sustaining a crushed left leg during a low-speed rollover event. The UTV was being operated at a low speed on a relatively flat and grassy area. The vehicle tipped during a right turn, falling onto the driver’s side, trapping the victim’s leg under the UTV. The injuries sustained were severe and permanent.

ATVs are all-terrain vehicles, vehicles that travel on low pressure tires with a seat that is straddled by the operator, along with handlebars for steering control. They were first introduced in the early 1970s and almost immediately resulted in alarming personal injury rates for adolescents and children. Statistics released by the Consumer Product Safety Commission show that in 2005, there were an estimated 136,700 personal injuries associated with ATVs treated in United States hospital emergency rooms. In 2004, 767 people died in ATV-associated incidents.

A UTV, on the other hand, is a “side by side” where 2 or 4 people can drive off-road. The majority of UTVs come with a roll over protection system. Many may also come equipped with hard tops, windshields, and even cab enclosures. However, the Consumer Product Safety Commission stated that the vehicle may exhibit inadequate lateral stability, undesirable steering characteristics, and inadequate occupant protection during a rollover crash. Between 2003 and 2009, 116 deaths occurred in UTV accidents.

Chicago injury lawyer Susan L. Novosad recently obtained a $1.2 million Illinois premises liability settlement on behalf of an Illinois injured victim. In 2002, the plaintiff was employed by the defendant as a general handyman on the estate. The injured plaintiff was gardening on the property near a greenhouse when a large selection of the façade of the greenhouse fell onto the plaintiff, causing him to suffer severe and permanent injuries. He suffered crush injury, lumbar plexopathy, radiculopathy, hip and back pain, sensory numbness, impairment, weakness, concussion, and depression.

Third party defendants were hired by the defendant to evaluate the greenhouse structure and found that the greenhouse was structurally unsound and in an unstable condition. However, the third party defendants failed to notify the city in which the defendant’s estate was located of the greenhouse’s inhabitable condition. The third party defendants also failed to secure the site around the structure to prevent personal injuries to people lawfully on the premises, like the personal injury plaintiff. The defendant estate owner was aware that the greenhouse structure was unsafe and unfit, but failed to fix the condition of the greenhouse and failed to take appropriate measures to prohibit the Illinois premises liability plaintiff from accessing the area near the greenhouse. But, the defendant chose to make no repairs to ensure the safety of others due to the costly nature.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that a Gurnee family was recently awarded $30 million after a judge ruled in favor of the Illinois family’s claims that medical negligence during a childbirth caused the child to be a quadriplegic. The Illinois birth injury lawsuit alleged that medical negligence was committed by federally employed physicians who were at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago when their son was born in 2003.

The Illinois family’s lawyers stated that an infection started before the mother went into labor, but she was not given necessary antibiotics. Then, during the first few hours of life, the child showed “red flags” related to having an infection, but the infection went untreated. The infection unfortunately traveled into the child’s bloodstream and eventually into his brain. The result of the Illinois medical negligence during the childbirth was permanent brain damage. The Chicago birth injury lawsuit alleged that had the doctors followed the standard of care, the child would have been born a normal baby boy instead of a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy.

The attorneys at Levin & Perconti are unfortunately all too familiar with Illinois birth injury lawsuits. Birth injuries are a category of medical malpractice claims and lawsuits that arise when babies are injured at birth or before birth by careless or intentional acts of a healthcare provider. The birth injury attorneys at Levin & Perconti have extensive experience with birth injury lawsuits and injury lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Like in the Gurnee family’s case, many of the places we go and spaces we inhabit each day are owned by the federal government and operated by its employees. Victims like the Gurnee family have the right to seek restitution from the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

More information is available on the birth injury verdict here.

The St. Clair Record recently reported that a wrongful death lawsuit settled for $700,000; the defendant, L.A. Weight Loss, will make payment to the two children of a woman who suffered fatal liver failure after using supplements recommended to her by the Weight Loss Centers. According to the wrongful death lawsuit, the victim sought help losing weight in 2004 and was given and used supplements not tested or regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She then developed symptoms of liver disease and sought treatment a hospital where she was diagnosed with liver failure caused by the supplements. She died before she could receive a liver transplant.

While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has broad authority to regulate drugs, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 mandated that the FDA treat dietary supplements as foods rather than drugs. So, unlike drugs which are subject to safety testing, dietary supplements are not subject to safety and efficacy testing and there are no approval requirements. The FDA is limited to only taking action against dietary supplements after they are proven to be unsafe products. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are permitted to make specific claims of health products, referred to as “structure or function claims” on the labels of dietary supplement products. They may not, however, claim to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent disease and must include a disclaimer. The way dietary supplements are regulated may be why there are personal injury and wrongful death claims from drugs, such as these weight loss supplements. In order to better protect people from the dangerous products they may ingest, the FDA needs to be able to test the safety of products prior to their release on the market.

Read more about the wrongful death lawsuit settlement here.

Chicago news source Lake Effect News is reporting tonight that there was a severe fire in an Uptown SRO this afternoon. Editor Lorraine Swanson reported that the fire on the seventh-floor left one man with personal injuries of second-degree burns. He also suffered from smoke inhalation. Dozens of other residents exited their units and many residents told Lake Effect News that the building’s alarm system did not go off during the fire; they were ignorant of the fire until the fire trucks pulled up. One witness told Lake Effect News that firefighters were knocking on doors looking for the fire and smoke came pouring out when they found the unit with the fire. Firefighters used a thermal imaging camera to find the victim who was lying on the floor.

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.

A company has agreed to pay a product liability settlement in the amount of $200,000. The settlement will settle allegations that it violated U.S. law when it imported the Thomas and Friends, Curious George, and Winnie the Pooh toys that had high levels of lead in them and posed dangers to children who used the toys. The Consumer Product Safety Commission had alleged that the company imported tens of thousands of toys that violated the federal lead paint ban and then distributed them to retail stores.

Click here to read more about the product liability settlement.

Product liability victims – including many consumers who thought they were purchasing antibiotic free chicken - can receive cash and coupons under a proposed product liability settlement to a class action lawsuit that a judge is currently pondering. The class action product liability lawsuit contends that the nation’s largest poultry producer falsely promoted its birds as being raised without drugs. Consumers could receive refunds of up to $50 per household.

People have started paying extra attention to the food they eat after doctors and researchers have expressed concern that animal receiving antibiotic treatment could lead to drug-resistant “superbugs” dangerous to people. Most major chicken producers use antibiotics to keep their poultry healthy, which many worry may hurt consumers’ health in the long run.

To read more about the product liability settlement, click here.

Levin & Perconti attorney Jeffrey Martin has obtained a settlement award of $607,500 for an Illinois child who lost a finger due to a nurse’s negligence. The child was born in June 2004, 10 weeks premature, and was placed in the hospital’s Special Care Nursing Unit. Although she was able to breathe on her own, she had to be fed intravenously through a peripheral IV line. Two days after the Illinois child was born, her mother got the chance to hold her newborn daughter for the first time. She noticed that the area around the insertion site was swollen and alerted a nurse who told her it was caused by the bandage holding the IV in place.

Continue reading "Levin & Perconti obtains $607,500 settlement for child’s injury " »

The attorneys at Levin & Perconti just came across an article describing a large federal jury verdict to workers who received personal injuries. A jury has awarded multi millions to ten workers in a personal injury lawsuit. The personal injury victims alleged that they sustained personal injuries as a result of contamination. Ten workers for a British Petroleum PLC plant (probably known to you as “BP”) have been awarded millions in the personal injury lawsuit jury verdict against the BP company. The Associated Press (AP) has reported that the BP workers were awarded millions by a federal jury last week, after alleging that they sustained personal injuries from contamination within the plant.

Continue reading "Workers awarded $100 million in personal injury lawsuit" »

A jury issued a wrongful death award of more than $7 million to the family of a passenger killed in a 2006 crash of a regional jet of Comair. The flight crashed after attempting to take off from a runway at an airport that was too short for commercial flights. Forty-nine people were wrongfully killed. This wrongful death lawsuit is the only passenger aviation accident lawsuit that has reached trial at this time. The next step of the process will occur next year. A different jury will decide next year if the Comair airline was negligent. If a jury determines that Comair is negligent, the family will be eligible for punitive damages. Click here to read more about the $7 million verdict.

Continue reading "$7 million awarded to victim’s family in plane crash" »

After a lengthy four year long legal battle, a mining company has settled hazardous product liability claims with the government for a record $1.79 billion. The hazardous waste pollution occurred across 19 states. The settlement was announced by federal agencies last week.

Continue reading "Mining company settles for $1.79 billion" »

A Cook County jury has granted an $8.1 million award to a 22 year-old man who dove into a swimming pool and was rendered an incomplete quadriplegic. This is the highest pool-related accident verdict in Illinois.

Continue reading "Cook County jury awards a gross verdict of $8.1 million to victim of swimming pool accident " »

The attorneys at Levin & Perconti recently read about a jury award in Lawyers & Settlements.com in a landmark personal injury lawsuit. Last week, a jury awarded a woman $300 million in a tobacco lawsuit. This is the largest single award to an individual who has filed a lawsuit against a tobacco company. It is expected to be appealed by the defendant Philip Morris.

The personal injury plaintiff was twenty years old when she started smoking and did not quit until she was 45 years old. Almost twenty years later, the plaintiff now suffers from emphysema and needs a lung transplant. The plaintiff hopes to receive the award after any possible appeal so that she can afford the lung transplant.

Continue reading "Smoker awarded $300 million in personal injury lawsuit" »

Jiffy Lube has agreed to settle a personal injury lawsuit with the family of an 88 year-old Illinois injury victim who was hurt due to a fall at a Chicago Jiffy Lube. The personal injuries resulted in the victim’s untimely death four weeks after the fall. Susan Novosad of Levin & Perconti represented the victim’s family in the wrongful death lawsuit.

Continue reading "Chicago family reaches $850,000 settlement in premises liability lawsuit" »

CVS Pharmacy has reached an $875,000 settlement and will stop sales of expired products, including food, medicine, and baby formula. The agreement was announced on Tuesday. Investigators had bought expired goods in 60% of CVS stores they canvassed.

To read more about the expired products settlement.

Target has reached a settlement in an expired products and mispricing lawsuit. Target has agreed to pay $375,000 to settle the product liability lawsuit. The retail giant will establish a position for a senior manager who will ensure advertised prices match what customers are charged.

To read more about the Target settlement.

A jury recently awarded a family a $850,000 wrongful death verdict for the death of their son in a baseball game. The jury found that the maker of the aluminum baseball bats failed to adequately warn about the product’s dangers. The 18 year-old wrongful death victim was hit in the head by a ball.

To read more about the $850,000 jury award.