In 2006, Kipling Development Corp. was building a home in Will County, Ill. Kipling was the general contractor on the job. The firm hired subcontractors to handle specific pieces of the job, including Speed-Drywall and United Floor Covering. A service technician, Brian Harwell, entered the worksite to replace a furnace…
Kerry Hogland was 36 years old when driving her sedan on a highway near Fredericktown, Mo. An employee of Town & Country Grocers of Fredericktown drove onto the highway from an on-ramp. The driver of the Town & Country Grocers vehicle did not heed a stop sign at the end…
In the opinion written by the Illinois Appellate Court for the 4th District, the appellate court upheld the right of an injured plaintiff to recover the full amount of medical expenses if that amount had been written off by the medical provider. In the underlying case, a Coles County jury…
On April 12, 2012, Jennifer Hawkins was stopped at a red light on westbound 127th Street in Lemont, Ill. The defendant, 18-year-old Nicole Barrett, rear-ended the car right behind Hawkins, which pushed that car into Hawkins’s car. The force of the impact totaled the middle vehicle (a Chevy Suburban) and…
Dennis Seay worked for Daniel Construction Co., which was a contractor for Celanese Corp. From 1971 through 1980, he did maintenance work at the Celanese polyester fiber plant located in Spartanburg, S.C. Seay was exposed to asbestos-containing products while working at Celanese. The different jobs that Seay had included handling…
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has affirmed a district court decision where sanctions were allowed in the form of attorney fees. The court of appeals stated that under Federal Rule 37, sanctions may include an order to pay the amount of reasonable expenses incurred in preparing the…
The Illinois Supreme Court case of Kotecki v. Cyclops Welding, 146 Ill.2d 155 (1991) is the decision by the court that stands for the law that an employer may avoid contribution liability by waiving its lien under Section 5(b) of the Workers’ Compensation Act. This is in reference to the…
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s decision regarding a third-party lawsuit. Sam Chee was driving with his wife, Toni Chee, in August 2010 when their car slammed into a tree. Toni was seriously…
There were eight cases, all involving claims by or on behalf of the estates of now deceased former workers of the defendant Weyerhaeuser Co. The former workers had claimed that their nonoccupational exposure to asbestos was the cause of their injuries and subsequent deaths. Weyerhaeuser operated a door manufacturing facility…
After much deliberation, two years ago Illinois lawmakers crafted a more lenient law for the transferring of juveniles to adult courts for some serious crimes. The idea was to give judges the clear opportunity to judge or to use their discretion for juveniles charged with serious crimes who were 16…