Articles Posted in Personal Injury

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On Aug. 28, 2010, Peter Chilton was driving a 2009 Harley Davidson Road King motorcycle with his girlfriend riding on the back. Chilton was stopped at the red light on Grand Avenue at the intersection with County Road in Waukegan, Ill., when the defendant, Joshua Uhlir, who was driving his vehicle westbound, hit Chilton and his girlfriend from behind causing minor damage to the motorcycle.

Chilton, 55, maintained that the force of the impact caused his motorcycle to move forward and fall to the right side. In his effort to prevent the bike from falling over he felt a pop in his right shoulder. He did not immediately go to the emergency room or see a doctor and did not receive medical attention until he went to his primary physician three days later complaining of right shoulder pain.

Chilton sustained a tear in the shoulder, but he did not need surgery. He also suffered aggravation of pre-existing degenerative changes in his cervical spine.

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Khalil Bell and his mother, Kimberly Street, lived in a Chicago area apartment. On March 10, 2008, the heat in their apartment was off. To warm the apartment, she turned on the stove and put pots of water on the burners to create steam. After the water had reached the boiling point, she took the pots off the stove.

According to her deposition testimony, one burner was left on and uncovered when she went to take a shower. While Street was showering, her son Khalil, who was living with her, walked into the kitchen. When he did so, his shirt caught on fire burning him severely. On behalf of Khalil Bell, a minor, Street filed a lawsuit against the landlady and building manager, Helen Bakus and Nimo Rasho.

The lawsuit alleged that the building owner, Bakus, and the building manager, Rasho, had been notified about the unsafe placement of the stove in the apartment and about the lack of heat in the apartment. Street testified at her deposition that neither of the problems were remedied.

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A Cook County jury has entered a $231,674 verdict for Patrick Somenzi, who was a patron at the bar known as the Dirty Sock. The bar is located at 9300 S. Roberts Road in Hickory Hills, Ill. On Dec. 11, 2012, Somenzi was a patron at the bar, which was offering an “all you can drink” special during a Bears game telecast.

He was injured when some of the bar’s unruly patrons who had been ejected earlier re-entered the bar and attacked Somenzi and his friends.

Somenzi, who was 23 at the time, was a warehouse worker and sustained torn ligaments in his left ankle that required surgery to repair because of the attack.

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On Oct. 8, 2009, Kristin Gosell was driving northbound on the Willow Road exit ramp from Interstate 294 when the defendant, 42-year-old Hope Lerman, ran a red light on eastbound Willow Road and T-boned the driver’s side of Gosell’s car. Both cars were totaled in the high-speed crash. Gosell was trapped inside her car for 20 minutes until the Glenview Fire Department personnel could extract her from the vehicle.

She was taken by ambulance to Glenbrook Hospital where she was treated and released. However, Gosell, 39, sustained herniated discs at C3-4 and C5-6, soft tissue injuries to her neck, back and ribs and bruising to her chest and stomach. She underwent physical therapy, was treated by a pain specialist and first saw an orthopedist, Dr. Jay Levin, in October 2012. She had presented evidence of $34,851 for her medical expenses and also claimed lost time from her job as a teacher.

Dr. Levin testified that Gosell’s disc condition was permanent, but she was not a candidate for follow-up surgery.

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Cheneka Ross, 13, was playing tag at a Chicago Park District Park playground while being chased by another child. She ran to the slide to avoid being tagged by one of her playmates. Cheneka climbed up the slide and as she started to slide down, one of her feet became caught on a piece of plastic near the slide’s bottom. She was not able to see the plastic from the top as the slide was curved. The girl fractured her ankle requiring surgery.

Cheneka’s mother, Artenia Bowman, filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Park District asking for her daughter’s medical expenses as well as damages, claiming that the district had acted willfully and wantonly toward the slide’s users. It was also alleged that the park district had received numerous complaints from the community about the slide’s condition and submitted multiple affidavits showed that the park district had received complaints about the slide’s defect since 2010.

The park district’s records system showed that in August 2010 the slide was “boarded up and waiting for repair.” One week prior to the incident with Cheneka, the park district log indicated that the “slide west of park [was] still broken.”

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Mei Pang was a passenger in a car driven by Ingrid Chan in January 2002 when a crash occurred between Chan’s car and another vehicle driven by Donald McGinnis. Pang was injured severely. McGinnis’s insurer paid Pang $100,000 to settle her personal injury lawsuit and claim.

Chan was insured by Farmers Insurance Group. Chan and her husband had a special “umbrella policy.” The umbrella policy covered the named insureds (the Chans themselves), any relatives of the Chans by blood, marriage or adoption or any person under 21 in the care of the named insured.

On Jan. 7, 2010, Pang filed a complaint for underinsured motorist coverage seeking coverage both from Farmers under the Chan umbrella policy and also from Mid-Century Insurance Co., which issued the Chans their primary auto insurance policy.

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On Oct. 2, 2009, the car driven by defendant Monica Carroll, a 57-year-old attorney, rear-ended James Anderson’s car on northbound Illinois Interstate 94 between Lake Cook Road and Route 22.  Anderson was a 66-year-old retiree who alleged that the impact caused neck pain or accelerated a degenerative condition in his cervical spine, which required physical therapy, steroid injections and radiofrequency ablations to alleviate his pain.

Radiofrequency ablation is utilized to reduce pain. An electrical current produced by a radio wave is used to warm up the area of pain usually a nerve tissue, which in many cases leads to decreasing the pain signals from that specific area.

Anderson was told by his treating physician that he would require fusion surgery for a C4-5 disc herniation and degenerative cervical spine with the possibility of a 3-level fusion procedure needed at C4-7. However, Anderson has not undergone the surgery. At trial, Anderson produced past medical expenses of $55,000 although $125,000 for future surgery costs was barred by the court.

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On June 4, 2008, 70-year-old Edward Wasik, a retired school teacher, was a customer at Ridgeway Chevrolet, an automobile dealer located in Lansing, Ill. Wasik was walking behind the service bays in the service department when he was struck by a car backing out of the service bay.

The car that hit Wasik was driven by the defendant, Barry Boer, a mechanic at the dealership. Boer was operating another customer’s car, but apparently was looking forward while moving in reverse. Boer struck Wasik with that customer’s car, injuring him.

Wasik sustained injuries to his lower back, ribs and left knee, which resulted in arthroscopic surgery, physical therapy and continuing injections to the left knee as well as physical therapy to his back.

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Julie Abrams was injured at the Oak Lawn-Homewood Middle School on April 19, 2012 during a ceremony inducting her as a member of the National Junior Honor Society. Julie fell at the program because of an allegedly “dark, non-illuminated, elevated, unmarked, uneven surface.” Julie required shoulder surgery as a result and expended $35,800 in medical bills for that injury.

In a lawsuit brought by Julie’s family against Oak Lawn-Homewood Middle School, it was contended that the cafeteria/auditorium — known as the Cafetorium — was “public property intended or permitted to be used for recreational purposes” under Section 3-106 of the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act. The school asked that the Cook County Circuit Court judge dismiss Julie’s negligence case because of tort immunity. The trial judge denied the school district’s motion, but certified the question for immediate appeal.

This was the question presented to the Illinois Appellate Court for answering: “Where an injury occurs on an area of public property which has both recreational and non-recreational purposes, should Section 3-106 immunity apply when said area is located within a public school where the primary character of the area and overall facility is educational and non-recreational?”

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James Fregeau was involved in two different and separate motor vehicle crashes.  Both cases were consolidated for discovery and trial.  The first crash took place on April 22, 2009 when a car driven by the defendant, Anthony Foster, rear-ended a vehicle, which then pushed into Fregeau’s car, injuring him.

The second crash took place on Dec. 4, 2010, when the car driven by defendant Dina Whittier rear-ended Fregeau’s car on southbound Interstate 57 near 167th Street in Markham, Ill.   In that case, both cars spun out and a second impact with each other occurred.

Fregeau, 27, claimed that he suffered spinal sprains and an aggravation of facet joint arthropathy,  which required emergency room visits, doctor visits, CT scans, MRIs, bone scans, physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, facet blocks and future facet ablations.

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