Articles Posted in Car Accidents

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On April 25, 2008, Marie Wilkins, a teacher at Everest College, started walking toward the Metra train station at Michigan and Van Buren streets in Chicago. She was walking south across Van Buren Street, between State and Wabash, where Van Buren intersects midblock with an alley. The alley is also known as Holden Court in some parts of the Loop.

 

It was at this alley that she was hit by a backing vehicle traveling eastbound on the one-way westbound street. The car was being driven by the defendant Orlando Solis, 27, and was owned by the defendant, Cynthia Ayala, who was a passenger.

 

Wilkins, 60, was knocked to the ground, and she lost consciousness. She sustained a fractured scapula of her left shoulder and a fractured fifth metacarpal/little finger on her left hand. She also sustained elbow bursitis and a two-inch scar on her left knee. No surgery was necessary, but she did undergo physical therapy and lost three months of work as a medical assistant instructor plus $85,300 for lost opportunity to teach an additional class for a full course load for 4 years until the school closed.

 

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William Andrews was driving northbound on Western Avenue on Feb. 11, 2007 when his car collided with a pickup truck driven by defendant Luis Chavez. Chavez ran the red light while travelling westbound on 139th Street in Blue Island.

Andrews, 28, sustained a closed head injury with a brain bleed resulting in short-term memory loss, personality changes, uncontrolled emotions and mood swings, and a loss of his job as a cable installer for Comcast. He claimed inability to ever work again.

Luis Chavez was an undocumented Mexican national who did not have a valid driver’s license. After the crash, Chavez fled the scene on foot and was later convicted of leaving the scene of an accident involving injury.

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Sara Peretsky, a well-known author of the V.I. Warshawski novels, was a passenger with her husband, the driver, on Lake Shore Drive when they were rear-ended by another car that was driven by the 16-year-old defendant, Vy.  Vy apparently lost control of his vehicle.  The impact caused Peretsky’s vehicle to spin and strike a retaining wall.

Peretsky, 58, is a novelist and writer who claimed that she suffered whiplash with cervical radiculopathy, shoulder, arm and hand injuries. Her medical bills totaled $19,850.

Peretsky claimed that her injuries prevented her from completing a manuscript on time, causing her to be forever behind in her publishing deadlines. She claimed lost income of $1,518,000.

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Lisa Learmonth filed suit against Sears in a case that was litigated in the federal court in the Southern District of Mississippi.  Learmonth was injured in 2005 in a car accident with a Sears employee.  She was seriously injured and filed suit against Sears for her damages.  A jury in the district court found Sears liable and entered a verdict in the amount of $4 million in compensatory damages, including $2.2 million in non-economic damages for pain and suffering.

The verdict was appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which held that Mississippi’s caps law on non-economic damages held firm and thus, the verdict of the jury was reduced to conform to that Mississippi law. The Mississippi law caps non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases at $500,000, and in all other civil actions the cap is set at $1 million. The Mississippi law was found by the federal court of appeals to be constitutional.

The lawyers for Sears applauded the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision, saying that caps are good for business in states like Mississippi, which are trying to attract manufacturers and other large corporations.

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In June 2009, two trucks on westbound Interstate 80 crashed near or on the right shoulder of the highway. The driver of a second tractor trailer for Jefferson Trucking Co., also on westbound 80, crashed into the rear end of the stopped truck operated by Randolph Ferguson, who was driving for Cresco Lines. The force of the two trucks moved the lead truck 1,200 to 1,500 feet farther down the highway, leaving debris and motor fluids on the roadway.

The plaintiff, Patty Lunn, who was also driving westbound on Interstate 80, came upon the accident scene. The Lunn vehicle skidded on the oily residue left by the trucks, her car became airborne and rolled over three times striking the top of the concrete overpass and median crash barrels before finally coming to rest on the median strip.

Plaintiff Janet Daft, Lunn’s passenger, sustained a collapsed lung and fractured vertebrae to her spine at C-2 and C-3, requiring cervical fusion. Daft already had osteoporosis, but will require future medical treatment as the fusion loosens due to the weakening of her bones. Both Lunn and Daft are school teachers.

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