Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog

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.

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.

Over the past few days, several individuals received personal injuries and some unfortunately passed away after several individual Illinois motor vehicle accidents in the south suburban areas of Chicago. A teenager from a south suburb of Chicago died after he lost control of a sports utility vehicle that he was driving near the Illinois city of Country Club Hills. In addition to the Orland Park seventeen year old who passed away in the SUV accident, three other youths received personal injuries. The teenager was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle; there was no indication that alcohol or any other drugs were involved in the deadly motor vehicle accident.

Further, on Sunday night, a speeding vehicle struck and killed a teen bicyclist in Dolton, Illinois. The Dolton driver that caused the Illinois wrongful death has continued to elude police and was eluding police when he was speeding and struck the teenager.

Another individual received serious personal injuries after a south side motor vehicle accident on Monday. The injuries occurred after the motorcycle accident victim crashed his motorcycle on outbound interstate 57 at 127th Street in Illinois. Around the same time in another South Side suburban neighborhood, Country Club Hills, a Mexican restaurant was hit by a car and received extensive property damage.

Additionally, an Orland Park man who was involved in a motor vehicle accident a year ago died over the weekend from his personal injuries. He was involved in a motorcycle accident last August on I-355 at Interstate 88; an autopsy revealed that the motorcycle victim died of cerebral injuries.

More information about the serious Illinois motor vehicle accidents is available at The Southtown Star.

Local authorities in California reported that eight people were killed and ten people received personal injuries after a driver racing in a motor vehicle race lost control of his off-roader vehicle. The vehicle went airborne in the motor vehicle accident and landed on top of spectators. The agency investigating the deadly car accident stated that bystanders did not have much of an opportunity to escape the out-of-control vehicle. Online videos of the race from former years show that spectators stand dangerously close to the speeding off-road vehicles. Additionally, no concrete or other barriers exist to separate spectators from the cars. The race was held in a desolate area in California on federal desert land just east of the mountains – off-roaders were racing the loop reaching speeds of over 60 miles per hour.

The driver has not been arrested; alcohol was not a factor in the crash. A different off-roader commented that he did not think the racer did anything stupid, he just hit it too hard. One eyewitness said that she could tell that several people were trapped under the vehicle. She personally saw one woman with a major head wound bleeding and another individual crushed beneath the car. The investigators on scene were searching the vehicle for mechanical defects and to attempt recreating the collision scene.

A video of the off-roader race accident scene where 8 people were killed and ten people were injured is available at Chicago Tribune.

Our Illinois readers may remember that the Howe Developmental Center in Tinley Park, Illinois was criticized for being the worst-run state facility for developmentally disabled adults in Illinois. It was a place where Illinois employee neglect and abuse was blamed for dozens of Illinois wrongful deaths. In fact, two Cook County wrongful death lawsuits allege that Howe Developmental Center employees and on-duty doctors failed to prevent Illinois residents from choking to death. The Illinois abuse and neglect problems were so outrageous and hopeless that Illinois closed it in June once the remaining residents found homes elsewhere.

Despite the allegations of rampant neglect and improper care, officials reported that not a single Howe Developmental Center manager or employee was fired as a result of the closing. The Chicago Tribune obtained records that show that nearly 400 former Home employees are now employed at other Illinois state facilities for the developmentally disabled. For those who fought for the closure of Howe Developmental Center, the transfers and hiring of these former employees show a lack of accountability and highlight the problems that the Illinois Department of Human Services encounters when it attempts to fire union employees for poor performance. Many advocates now worry that the culture of ineptitude prevalent at Howe Developmental Center are now spreading to other Illinois state care facilities.

Investigations performed by the United States Department of Justice and the state officials of the inspector general backed up contentions that the facility failed to provide a safe living environment for its residents. The investigations cited a record of questionable care that put Illinois residents at risk. For example, the investigation showed that one resident at Howe Developmental Center in his 50s died after employees gave him medication but neglected to monitor his vital signs after he sustained a serious head injury. Additionally, an ailing man died in his wheelchair and sat there for more than an hour before anyone noticed. These allegations of Illinois wrongful deaths, uncovered by investigations, are atrocious and highlight the problems that lack of accountability can cause.

Click the link to read more about the closed Illinois facility.

The numbers are shocking and eye-opening. Nearly 300,000 Chicago traffic accidents occur yearly and a Chicago deadly accident takes place every 21.5 hours. However, one study shows that some measures have resulted in about 200 lives being saved each year in Chicago. The rates of deadly Chicago traffic accidents and serious Illinois personal injuries have decreased significantly since the early 1990’s due in large part to safety enhancements on Illinois roads in addition to newer motor vehicles that offer a better change of surviving Chicago car accidents. The annual number of deaths and injuries from vehicle accidents in the Chicago area fell 12.5 percent from 2002 to 2005 and fatalities alone decreased 30.5 percent from 2005 to 2008, from 629 deaths annually to 437. The statistics are based on data collected by the Illinois Department of Transportation. DuPage County recorded the lowest fatality rates over the entire period studied and suburban Cook County and Lake County had the second lowest fatality rates. Illinois’s tougher seat belt laws as well as roadside checks aimed at catching drunk or otherwise impaired motorists are also helping to cut the rate of deadly crashes.

Nonetheless, there is still a lot of improvement to be made in Illinois road safety. In the city of Chicago, one of the biggest challenges will be decreasing vehicle-pedestrian accidents. Further, despite the greatest decline between 2002 and 2008, the crash rates are still highest in the city – three times the rate of some rural areas. Almost 25 percent of fatal crashes in Chicago involve pedestrians. Additionally, fatal Chicago vehicle accidents occur across the Chicago metropolitan area late at night. Traffic fatalities occurring at night accounted for more than a third of all vehicle-related deaths in the Chicago region in 2008.

You can read the full Chicago traffic deaths and injuries report by clicking the link.

According to a recent Southtown Star article, Illinois state health officials announced last week that they are continuing to press ahead with a license revocation of a Southland nursing home based on the nursing home’s history of substandard nursing home care, including nursing home abuse and neglect. The nursing home, Evergreen Health Center, which is located on the south side of Chicago, is now reported to be back in compliance with recent nursing home care violations despite allegations of nursing home neglect. A letter last week from the administrator of the Illinois nursing home stated that the nursing home had remedied the nursing home problems cited by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The Illinois nursing home has made changes to avoid the license revocation, including increased continuing education programs, in-house clinical audits, and updated policies and programs. Nevertheless, Illinois health officials stated that the facility has a history of serious nursing home deficiencies.

The Chicago nursing home lawyers at Levin & Perconti are glad that Illinois health officials are treating Evergreen’s history of noncompliance seriously. Our Illinois nursing home neglect lawyers have filed several nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuits against the Evergreen nursing home in the past. Nursing home residents have died from repeated failures of staff medical professionals, administrators, and aides. For example, one of our nursing home neglect and wrongful death lawsuits involve a bedridden senior citizen resident who tragically died at Evergreen due to the failure of staff to monitor the resident’s developing pressure sores.

More information about the Illinois nursing home license revocation is available at Southtown Star.

An Illinois man, only twenty-five years of age, was pronounced dead early yesterday morning after the motorcycle he was driving crashed this morning in Park Forest, a suburb of Chicago. Officials say that the victim of the Illinois motorcycle crash was pronounced dead at 8:10 a.m.

Another young Illinois man, only twenty-eight, was pronounced dead yesterday morning at 4:00 a.m. after an Illinois car crash on the westbound Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago. The 28 year-old man was a passenger in a car and the driver got in a race with another car on the Expressway. The Illinois car crash victim was sitting in the front passenger’s seat when he was partially ejected and killed when the car left the road, overturned on the right embankment, and hit a tree. The Illinois driver of the vehicle was also ejected and taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital of Cook County. A backseat passenger was also taken to Stroger with non-life-threatening injuries. No individual in the vehicle was wearing a seat belt.

Remember, in Illinois, the law states that each driver and front seat passenger of a motor vehicle must wear a safety belt. Each year in Illinois, lives are needlessly lost in Chicago car crashes simply because individuals were not buckled in. As for motorcycles, more individuals in Chicago hit the road on their motorcycles when the weather is nice in the summer. Please practice safety – wear protective gear, especially a helmet, and try to pick a bright color for the helmet. Please remember to obey the rules of the road.

Click the following web links to read more about the Illinois motorcycle crash or Chicago car crash.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Illinois state Senator Heather Steans has divested her ownership interest in a southwest suburban nursing home that has faced repeated citations for serious patient neglect. Some of the citations for patient neglect include medical failures that allegedly contributed to the Illinois wrongful death of two patients. Last December, two patients died at Evergreen Health Care Center in Evergreen Park while the Care Center provided substandard care that moved state health authorities earlier this month to revoke the facility’s license. Despite the move and the two alleged Illinois wrongful deaths, Evergreen continues to operate while contesting the revocation before an administrative law judge.

State Senator Steans had no operational role in the Illinois nursing home, but following a previous Chicago Tribune report on the facility, Senator Steans shed her 2.8 percent interest in the nursing home. Illinois wrongful death lawyer Steven Levin responded that “it’s shocking that somebody who has been an advocate for nursing home reform has an ownership in a home that has a repeated background of citations.” Illinois nursing home abuse firm Levin & Perconti filed an Illinois nursing home neglect lawsuit against Evergreen last week. The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the nursing home missed doses of the victim’s medications, failed to keep a log charting her medicines, and failed to inform the victim’s doctor that her blood test results were abnormal.

Continue reading "Lawmaker divests troubled Illinois nursing home stake" »

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would repeal the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, making it easier for families of those killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion through wrongful death lawsuits or personal injury lawsuits to sue for punitive damages. The Committee rejected an amendment that stipulated that the bill would not apply retroactively.

Several other interesting news arose last week regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For example, the New York Comptroller has hired attorneys in his effort to become the lead plaintiff in a federal class-action lawsuit by investors against BP over the Gulf spill. “The Energy Source” blog at Forbes took a stab at guesstimating BP’s total liability for the oil spill and estimated a total of $60.9 billion by breaking up the costs into three buckets – the $20 billion escrow fund, clean up and compensation, and fines and penalties.

The 150-plus personal injury lawsuits and other legal challenges face significant complications in the Gulf Area due to recusals and judges’ financial interests. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that federal judges in Gulf states have been extensively invested in the oil and gas industries for decade and those interests threaten to create a logjam for these Gulf spill personal injury lawsuits. Seven of the twelve federal judges of the Eastern District of Louisiana have already cited potential conflicts of interest in bowing out of cases bought by fisherman, charter operators, tourist services, and those wrongful death lawsuits brought by those killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

You can read more about the Gulf Coast oil spill updates on the American Association for Justice website.

Chicago wrongful death lawyers at Levin & Perconti were extremely saddened to read in the Chicago Sun-Times today that a young Chicago boy was wrongfully killed by a drunk driver in the Rogers Park neighborhood this morning. The 10 year-old boy was walking with his father and was between two vehicles when a vehicle driven by a suspected drunk driver hit one of the vehicles. The Chicago boy was crushed between two cars and died at 7:41am at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Illinois.

The 10 year-old Chicago boy was with his father and his three year-old sister who witnessed the wrongful death car accident. At the time, the young Chicago boy was heading to his aunt’s and uncle’s house while his parents went to work. Chicago area police are questioning the driver who smashed into the vehicle, killing the boy. Alcohol is suspected in the crash.

Wrongful death is a legal term used to describe a death that has been caused by the fault of another individual. For example, deaths caused by drunk driving or a defective product may be considered “wrongful death” under the law. Generally, wrongful death lawsuits are filed by family members of the decedent. Levin & Perconti has handed numerous wrongful death lawsuits and has recovered millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements for victims and their families.

More information about the Chicago 10 year-old boy’s wrongful death is available here.

The St. Clair Record reported that a recently filed Illinois wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the man died while swimming in a crowded Madison County Illinois lake after a lifeguard failed to provide him adequate assistance. In fact, the Illinois negligence lawsuit further contends that the lifeguard was allegedly talking and texting on her cell phone at the time of the incident.

The special administrator of the deceased man’s estate reported that the 45 year-old man visited Holiday Shores in July with his family. He decided to enjoy a swim in a designated beach area located in Edwardsville, Illinois. He was not alone – a number of other guests had also decided to swim in the same area that day. The wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the club should have had two lifeguards on duty because of the significant number of guests, instead of only one.

The Illinois drowning lawsuit also states that the 45 year-old decedent was swimming in the lake and began coughing and needing assistance. Friends and witnesses yelled and requested help, but the lifeguard did not reply in a timely fashion. The lifeguard had been on her cell phone throughout the day and was using her celphone at the time the incident occurred. Because of the lifeguard’s negligence, the lawsuit alleges, the victim’s deceased body was not discovered for more than one hour! The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit seeks a judgment of more than $150,000.

Click here to read more about the Illinois drowning lawsuit.

According to a preliminary federal and state of Illinois investigation disclosed earlier this week, a track crew inadvertently turned off the train gates and warning lights at a Chicago-area rail crossing last week, shortly before a deadly crash where a Chicago woman in her SUV was blindsided by a train. The Canadian National Railway train crew was working on signals and electrical circuits built near the crossing when the workers shut down all warnings to motorists about approaching trains.

Federal and state investigators state that the video that was shot from the Amtrak train’s locomotive while it was almost traveling nearly 79 miles per hour shows that the gates, flashing lights, and bells at the crossing did not turn on. The Federal Railroad Administration is leading the deadly train crash investigation, helped by Canadian National, the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Illinois Commerce Commission, and the National Transportation Safety Board. Officials stated that Canadian National crews had tried to fix the problem and thought they did, but they actually inadvertently deactivated the warning system, creating an unprotected crossing in the Chicagoland area that provided motorists no indication of oncoming trains.

Downloaded recordings do show that the train was sounding its horn and had working bells and flashing lights. Unfortunately, the crossing warning system did not work, which resulted in the wrongful death of a 26 year-old woman.

More information about the tragic deadly Chicago train crash is available here.

A family has filed a Cook County wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of their loved one, a man who was crushed and killed by industrial equipment while working on a construction project at the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant, according to the Chicago Breaking News Center. The victim was using a skid steer loader during construction of industrial fencing and gates at the plant on the west perimeter when his harness on his body had become entangled with the equipment. A skid steer loader is an engine-power machine that uses many attachments to reportedly save on labor costs. The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the entanglement caused the victim to be thrown to the ground and crushed to death by the machine.

The Chicago wrongful death lawsuit names the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the maker of the loader machine, and a construction company as defendants. The Chicago-are victim was an iron-worker with a wife and three children. At the time of his wrongful death, he had been working for Industrial Fence, Inc. The Cook County wrongful death lawsuit seeks damages great than $50,000.

The term “wrongful death” is a legal term that a death has been caused by the fault of another person. For example, deaths caused by drunk driving, the manufacture of a defective or dangerous product, or the construction of an uninsured structure or building, may be considered under the law as “wrongful death.” The Illinois wrongful death lawsuits are usually filed by family members of the decedent. Some times, these claims are filed in order to obtain monetary damages in order to cover the earnings the deceased person would have provided. Otherwise, they may be recovered to include expenses associated with death, lost benefits, lost inheritance, or pain and suffering.

To read more about the Cook County worksite wrongful death lawsuit.

The family of a South Side Chicago wrongful death victim has filed an Illinois wrongful death lawsuit against the man who has been charged in connection with the death. The Cook County wrongful death lawsuit was filed last week in Cook County Circuit Court and accuses the charged driver with negligence in the February death of the wrongful death victim, a 59 year-old Chicago woman.

In the criminal case, Cook County prosecutors allege that the driver was operating a late model Dodge that struck and killed the 59 year-old Chicago wrongful death victim as she was crossing the intersection of 69th Street and Halsted Street. Chicago police say that video surveillance footage from the area, including red light camera footage, led them to the alleged driver. The driver, who is from Chicago, has been charged with felony reckless homicide and failure to report an accident resulting in the death of another person. The driver remains in Cook County jail on $350,000 bail. The Chicago wrongful death lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the driver.

Legally, wrongful death means a death that has been caused by the fault of another person. In addition to the hit-and-run described above, other examples of wrongful deaths may be deaths caused by the manufacture of a defective or dangerous product, the construction of an unsound structure or building, or failing to diagnose a fatal disease. Wrongful death lawsuits, like the Cook County wrongful death lawsuit described above, are usually filed by family members or beneficiaries of the decedent.

More information about the Illinois hit-and-run lawsuit is available here.

An Illinois negligence lawsuit against an Illinois strip club can proceed after a decision issued by the Illinois Supreme Court. Chicagobreakingnews.com reported that the Illinois Supreme Court decided that DuPage County Diamond’s Gentlemen’s Club near West Chicago had a duty to prevent two intoxicated patrons from driving away. The Illinois Supreme Court ruling has made way for an Illinois negligence lawsuit filed by the families of one of the patrons and a woman who were killed in a subsequent alcohol-related accident. The drunk driver was convicted in 2007 of aggravated DUI and reckless homicide and is serving a 12-year prison sentence; however, the negligence lawsuit against him and the operating company of Diamonds Gentlemen’s Club is still pending.

While the DuPage County strip club does not have a liquor license, strip club patrons are allowed to bring their own liquor and the club sells them mixers. The drunk driver and his passenger had been drinking heavily at the club and were ordered to leave after the drunk driver was witnessed vomiting in the bathroom. In its opinion, the Illinois Supreme Court stated that the operating company “knew that the [drunk driver] was intoxicated and clearly knew he was driving from the premises.” Of the premises liability lawsuit, the victim’s attorney stated that it was a perfect storm of bad conduct.

The St. Charles Sun also reported that the owners of Diamonds Gentlemen’s Club could be held liable. The drunk driving accident involved an SUV traveling on Route 25 when it crossed the center line and slammed head-on into an SUV driven by a 27 year-old Yorkville woman who was two weeks away from giving birth.

The Chicagobreakingnews.com article about the premises liability lawsuit is available 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.

On the morning of Valentine’s day, a tragic deadly fire killed seven people, including four children, in Cicero, Illinois. Further, a Cicero Fire Department firefighter also suffered a personal injury when a chimney collapsed on his head inside the building. Two adults were wrongfully killed near the porch area and five others were found in the attic of the building which had a single stairwell as a means of escape. During the fire, however, the stairwell was blocked and trapped the victims.

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.

A recent editorial again highlighted the need for the U.S. legal system. Despite what proponents of tort reform and damages caps want you to believe, the United States personal injury lawsuit system works. The need for our system was recently reinforced by the Toyota product liability recall. The author of the editorial told the story of a man whose Toyota Camry started speeding wildly on a scenic cliff-side drive in California when it plunged into the ocean 70 feet below. While the driver survived, his wife who was a passenger in the car did not survive. Only a year later, a woman was crushed in her Camry when it became suddenly unstoppable, airborne, and hit a tree. Again, last summer, four members of a family were killed after the gas pedal on their Lexus was stuck.

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.

The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that a young Chicago-area couple has filed a car accident lawsuit after a violent crash killed their 13-month old son. The recent Chicago-area crash also killed two of the couple’s friends. The Chicago couple is now seeking justice and has filed a car accident lawsuit against the driver who is alleged to have slammed into their Honda Civic, resulting in the wrongful death of all three backseat passengers. The alleged driver is reported to have been fleeing another car crash he was involved in also in Chicago. The car accident lawsuit alleges that the defendant engaged in reckless conduct, which is defined as a conscious disregard for the safety of other people. The personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits seek at least $50,000 in damages.

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.