Articles Posted in Auto Accidents

by

The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago found that an injured motorcyclist’s husband’s statement was an admissible statement for the jury to hear and not barred as hearsay. The man told a state trooper that although his wife was severely injured, she said to him:  “I’m sorry. It’s not the trucker’s fault.It was mine.”

Betty Jordan, the motorcyclist, was severely injured when her motorcycle collided with a semi-trailer truck on an Indianapolis interstate highway. Both of Jordan’s legs were amputated at the knees. The Jordans filed suit against the trucker and his employer for negligence and loss of consortium. 

After a jury verdict for the defendants, the plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals arguing that the district court erred in ruling that the state trooper’s testimony — about what the husband told him — was hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 801.

Continue reading

by

The Illinois Supreme Court has taken a case for consideration dealing with the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission as to an employee’s commute from a motel to a job site. The issue in the case is whether the employee is covered for his injuries by the Workers’ Compensation Act when he was on his way from his motel (temporary living quarters) to his job site. The Supreme Court will look at whether the jobsite is linked closely enough to the worker’s employment so that the injuries he suffered in a car accident on the way to work are compensable. 

The law does not usually consider injuries while commuting to or from work as compensable unless the travel is a result or requirement of the job.

In 2006, the plaintiff, Ronald Daugherty of Springfield, Ill., took a temporary pipefitting job with The Venture-Newberg Perini Stone & Webster, which is a contractor working on a nuclear power plant in Cordoba, Ill.,  owned by Exelon Corp.  Daugherty was injured in a car accident on his way to work from his motel. As a result of his injuries, he filed a workers’ compensation claim. 

Continue reading

by

A Cook County jury returned a $21,762 verdict for a 68-year-old man who was stopped at a red light on southbound Harlem Avenue at Jackson Boulevard in Chicago. Tehudulio Roman was waiting for the traffic light to change when his car was rear-ended by the defendant, 18-year-old Daniel Garcia, in a high-force impact crash.

Roman was unable to drive from the scene and his wife came to drive him and the car back to their home. 

Roman began treatment one week after the crash, and was diagnosed with disc protrusions at L4-5 and L5-S1.  This required Roman to undergo six months of physical therapy.

Continue reading

by

In November 2008, Chavonne Freeman, 53, was stopped in traffic on westbound 144th Place at LaGrange Park in Orland Park, Illinois, when her car was rear-ended by a U.S. Postal Service vehicle. Freeman was taken from the scene to the emergency room at Palos Community Hospital. She complained of neck and back pain. She followed up with her primary care physician two days later with complaints of neck, back and knee pain. 

Six weeks after the crash, Dec. 29, 2008, Freeman was seen by an orthopedic surgeon; she complained of knee pain. She was diagnosed with patellar subluxation (partial dislocation) and instability in the left knee. Surgery was recommended for January 2009 and was performed on July 29, 2009.

Three weeks later, on Aug. 19, 2009, Freeman died from a pulmonary embolism caused by a deep vein thrombosis resulting from the knee surgery. No medical negligence was alleged in the lawsuit filed by her family. 

Continue reading

by

On April 30, 2009, Bretton Vaughn was driving southbound on Halsted Street in Harvey, Ill. Vaughn’s vehicle struck the plaintiff pedestrian, Sherry Wilson, in the crosswalk at 149th Street. The intersection at that location is a 3-way intersection. Wilson had walked westbound across two northbound lanes and two southbound lanes before reaching an island between the diverging or splitting southbound lanes. Halsted at that place splits into Halsted and Morgan, south of 149th Street.

When Wilson stepped off the island and crossed, she was in front of a stopped bus before entering the far right lane.  It was there that she was hit by the defendant’s vehicle. 

Wilson, 49, was walking to work. She suffered a severely comminuted tibial plateau fracture in her right knee requiring open reduction internal fixation surgery. She also had a small bleed to her head internally. She claimed her light was green when she started crossing the street and when she stepped off the island.

Continue reading

by

Plaintiff Joyce Kilburg was injured while she was a passenger in a taxicab. She filed a lawsuit claiming negligence and spoliation of evidence against defendants, which included the driver of the Zante Cab Co. taxi, Taxi Medallion Management, Inc. (Taxi Medallion), Taxi Affiliation Services, LLC (Taxi Affiliation) and Wolley Cab Association (Wolley). 

On the defendants’ motion under Illinois Code of Procedure §2-615, the spoliation claims were dismissed. The plaintiff appealed, arguing that the trial judge erred in dismissing the spoliation claims because her complaint sets forth sufficient facts to show that defendants had a duty to preserve the evidence.

In this case, on Oct. 6, 2009, Kilburg was injured when a taxi in which she was a passenger left the roadway and crashed into a tree. Zante was the owner of the taxi. On Oct. 8, 2009, Zante towed the taxi to a lot on Elston Avenue in Chicago. Taxi Medallion leased the lot and stored taxis there.

Continue reading

by

Elaine Shafran was stopped at a stop sign on Portwine Road and Orange Brace Road, in Riverwoods, Ill., when northbound defendant, Atsuko Alvarez, rear-ended a minivan behind the plaintiff, pushing the van into plaintiff’s station wagon.  The plaintiff, a 56-year-old special education teacher, alleged that the impact caused aggravation of a pre-existing arthritis in her lumbar spine.  She said she incurred medical bills of $18,000.

The defendant denied that Shafran was injured in the accident at all. She said that plaintiff waited until 9 days after the crash to get medical treatment. She first went to a chiropractor 15 months after the crash. The plaintiff, Shafran, was involved in 3 later accidents; in all of them, she was not at fault. Shafran testified that she had experienced low back pain since she delivered her first child in 1982.

During trial, the plaintiff’s medical testimony came from her internist and her chiropractor. On the defense side, the defendant hired an orthopedic surgeon to testify as to the damage feature of the case. 

Continue reading

by

The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments in a car accident case regarding a lawsuit brought against a deceased motorist. Two years after a 2008 car crash, the plaintiff, Sandra Relf, filed a personal injury lawsuit against a motorist she believed was negligent in causing her injuries.

The issue in this case was that the defendant, the man that Relf sued, had died three months after the car crash. Under Illinois law, there is a procedure for the event of the death of a plaintiff or defendant during the course of the legal process. In this case, the trial court ruled in favor of the defendant, finding that Relf had not properly sued the correct party, the estate of the decedent. But on appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court First District overturned that order.

On review by the Illinois Supreme Court, the plaintiff contended that she was unaware that the defendant, Joseph Grand Pre Jr., had died. Once Relf learned of the death of Pre, she amended the complaint and named an employee of the plaintiff’s lawyer’s staff as the special administrator of the Pre estate. However, as a matter of fact, Pre’s family had opened a probate estate months before Relf filed the original lawsuit. The defendant argued that Relf should have known by a simple on-line search of the Cook County court system that the defendant, Pre, had died and opened up a probate estate.

Continue reading

by

On Dec. 19, 2010, 38-year-old Paul Romano was driving southbound on Pulaski Street in the City of Chicago when the defendant, Kathleen Suchan, driving eastbound on 87th Street, went through a red light and crashed into the plaintiff’s vehicle. Romano was not treated by paramedics and did not go to the hospital after the crash. However, he went to a chiropractor three days after the incident with complaints of lower back pain in his legs. 

Romano contended that the collision caused a tear in his lower back, which was diagnosed by MRI three weeks after the occurrence. The MRI also showed a moderate degenerative disc disease of the lumbar spine. 

The plaintiff was treated with 20 visits at a chiropractor and saw an orthopedic surgeon four times. He had not undergone any treatment for the condition since August 2011. Plaintiff had been hired to start a new job as a personal trainer just before the incident, but was unable to start the job because of his injuries.

Continue reading

by

In 2003, plaintiff Amy Stanton was a passenger in a car driven by the defendant, Carolyn Rea. Stanton was injured and hospitalized after the car crashed. The driver of the other vehicle in the accident was uninsured. In October 2007 the case proceeded to a jury trial. The trial judge entered a verdict on liability against Rea on the issue of liability. The case was then submitted to the jury on the issue of damages wherein a verdict in the amount of $13,506.80 was entered. The trial judge then entered an added judgment in the amount of $4,501.44 for out-of-pocket expenses related to the bringing of the case through trial. 

The issue on appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, Fifth District, was the adjudication of the health care providers’ liens. There was a total of $5,806.02 in medical liens. At the trial level, the judge applied the Illinois Health Care Services Lien Act (770 ILCS 23/1) as to the adjudication of the medical liens. It required that plaintiff’s counsel reduce attorney fees to 30% of the verdict. The Health Care Services Lien Act maximizes at 40% of the amount of the verdict to the payment of medical liens. This would allow a plaintiff to receive no less than 30% of the judgment or settlement.

The error in the case was that the trial judge, in an attempt to apply the Health Care Services Lien Act, did not consider the out-of-pocket expenses in making the calculation. That resulted in a zero recovery for the plaintiff after paying attorney fees, out-of-pocket expenses and the health care liens. 

Continue reading