These consolidated appeals arise from an important issue facing professional athletics and contemporary culture as a whole. Former professional football players are developing significant neurological disorders after sustaining repeated concussions while playing football. Evolving scientific and medical research has uncovered a link between repeated blows to the head and developing…
Mildred Thomas was shopping at the CVS drugstore and asked the clerk to check the price of a chair that was stacked with other chairs in a metal bin on a 6-foot shelf. As the clerk reached up and moved the chair to look for the price, multiple chairs and…
Kacey Strough was 16 years old when he joined his high school football team. Apparently as a prank, his teammates threw footballs at his head while he was sitting on the sideline during a practice. He later went to the school nurse complaining of a headache and double vision. Kacey…
The plaintiff Michael Hawkins signed a release when he purchased a gym membership from X-Sport Fitness, which is owned by Capital Fitness Inc. The release document did not expressly cover the unusual hazard of falling mirrors, which occurred at the Chicago facility when a 3-foot by 8-foot mirror fell from…
Pengxuan Diao rented a converted garage. An employee of Southern California Gas Co. arrived while Diao was sleeping to perform maintenance. The gas company employee opened a gas valve that activated an uncapped gas line running to the garage where Diao was sleeping. The Southern California Gas Co. employee left…
A lawsuit was filed against the Chicago Zoological Society, which operates Brookfield Zoo, on land owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The case was filed by Kristine O’Toole for injuries that she suffered when she fell because of an alleged defect in the pavement. The defendant, the Chicago…
Allen Ginn, the owner of a trucking company, drove his truck to a sawmill to unload the logs he was hauling. When he reached his designated unloading area, the mill employees instructed him to release the tie-down straps on his load. As he did that, a log fell onto him…
On July 17, 2009, Kristen Henson was driving in the left lane of northbound Illinois Interstate 94 in West Deerfield Township when a car driven by the defendant, Steven Teeters, rear-ended her car. Henson, 35, was a retail purchaser. She alleged in her lawsuit that the crash caused headaches and…
A Cook County jury signed a verdict of $38,681 related to an Aug. 13, 2010 rear-end car crash. The plaintiff, Christina Pervomskaya, was stopped in a line of traffic on Waukegan Road in Glenview, Ill., when she was rear-ended by Sally Langan’s motor vehicle. Pervomskaya, 28, suffered a concussion, post-concussion…
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 3.9 million sports-related and recreation-related concussions occur in the United States each year. Most of the reported sports-related concussions occur in high school football. Continuing to play a sport with a concussion or symptoms of a head injury makes the…