Scot Vandenberg and his wife maintained that their allegations in an unfiled tort complaint triggered insurance coverage for an accident that injured Scot, paralyzing him during a party he attended on a 75-foot yacht. Scot was severely injured when he fell off a bench at the edge of a top…
In a case involving Donald Howell, who was born with profound cognitive impairment and who had received a settlement of $11 million from a Chicago landlord from lead-poisoning, the issue here was, could the court “substitute judgment” on where his money would go at the time of his death? Relying…
The 4th District of the Illinois Appellate Court in the case of a former railroad employee, James Smith, reversed the jury’s verdict finding that the trial judge had been wrong in preventing the defendant from presenting evidence regarding the plaintiff’s prior work history. Smith was a former railroad employee of…
The Neck & Back Clinic in Chicago was providing physical rehabilitation services to patients. In 1998, the clinic signed a series of leases for exterior building wall space to advertise its services. The clinic leased that advertising space through a company called Travisign, operated by David Travis. The Neck &…
Mark Barto, who was 41 at the time, worked as a rigger aboard the Derrick Barge 50, a vessel owned by the defendant J. Ray McDermott International Vessels Ltd. While Barto was greasing and spooling a whip line from an overhead gantry crane, he stood on a board inside a…
Kent Higgins, along with his wife and two children, visited Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari amusement park. During their stay, the filter pump connected to the park’s lazy river ride malfunctioned due to a tripped circuit breaker. While the park’s staff worked on fixing the problem, pool chemicals, which included…
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — considered by many to be the most effective piece of civil rights law ever passed in the United States. During the 50 years since its passage, it has been renewed by Congress several times without much alteration…
On Aug. 18, 2009, Douglas Anoman, a radio technician employed by Bartronics LLC, was working at the defendants’ Scrap Metal Services LLC and SMS Mill Services LLC steel mill in Burns Harbor, Ind. The purpose of working there was to service a crane radio. After Anoman removed the radio from…
On Oct. 17, 2011, Margaret Baumrucker was walking to work when she was hit by a taxicab in a crosswalk at the intersection of Oak Park Avenue and Windsor in Berwyn, Ill. Baumrucker, 60, was a psychiatric nurse and sustained a rotator cuff tendinopathy and glenoid labral tear/shredding in her…
Dwayne Gitter was a union electrician working at an exhibit center disassembling the electrical supply to the lighting that had been used at a recently completed trade show. He was standing on a scissors lift platform when the lift toppled from the weight of heavy electrical cables. Gitter fell 30…