Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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Three Illinois workers and two public worker unions waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a carbon copy of their union-fee dispute. The case they were waiting on from the Supreme Court was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. Because of the death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia, there was 4-4 split on the issue of whether mandatory payment of union fees for nonmember public workers is a First Amendment violation.

Because of the spit decision,  the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Friedrichs stands, but does not create a national precedent.

“Our case is in a strong position to be the next case on this topic that the Supreme Court takes up,” said attorney Jacob H. Huebert of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents the three plaintiff workers challenging whether union fees should be paid for nonmembers.

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In 2007, Christopher Lindroth suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was thrown from a motorized cart that swerved to avoid an oncoming car. This incident took place at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Lindroth was standing on the back of the motorized cart as it traveled down one of the ramps at the convention center when a McCormick Place employee directed a car around a closed security gate, which came into the cart’s path. With no working brakes, the driver of the cart quickly turned the motor off and attempted to slow the vehicle with his feet, veering to the right curb in an attempt to stop. Lindroth was thrown from the cart as a result of that maneuver and suffered a serious head injury.

Because of his traumatic brain injury, Lindroth now requires 24-hour care. Lindroth’s mother, Marcia Dempe, filed a lawsuit on behalf of her son against The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) and the event-planning company, Global Experienced Specialists (GES). The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County in July 2008.  Dempe alleged the two entities were negligent in allowing contractors like Lindroth’s employer to use the cart in an unsafe manner.

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Kacey Strough was 16 years old when he joined his high school football team. Apparently as a prank, his teammates threw footballs at his head while he was sitting on the sideline during a practice. He later went to the school nurse complaining of a headache and double vision. Kacey told the nurse that he had been hit on the head with a football and was concerned that he might have a concussion. The nurse allegedly attempted to call his grandmother with whom Kacey was living, but she was unable to reach her.

 

Kacey continued participating in team practices over the next two weeks.  He also returned to the nurse with continued complaints of headaches and vision difficulties. The school nurse called Kacey’s grandmother, but allegedly discussed only Kacey’s diagnosis of pink eye; she said nothing about his headaches or vision issues.

 

Several days later, while Kacey was home, he complained to his grandmother of headaches, neck pain and problems with vision and balance. Kacey’s grandmother took him to a hospital emergency room where an imaging revealed a mass in his head.

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Petar Kuzmanov, 23 at the time of a car accident, was a backseat passenger in a car driven by Hristo Hristov. Lauren Weiner was in the front seat passenger side allegedly engaged in a sexual act with Hristov while he was driving. Distracted, Hristov swerved onto a grassy median. As he moved the vehicle back onto the roadway, it overturned, struck a guardrail and was hit by 3 other vehicles including a fully loaded tractor-trailer and a pickup truck.

 

Kuzmanov was comatose for several months after the crash. He sustained a traumatic brain injury, which has affected his speech and cognitive abilities. He now requires therapy and assistance with daily living activities. He also suffered an amputation of his left index finger, degloving injuries to his right foot and a fractured right femur that required surgery. His medical bills were $530,000.

 

The guardian for Kuzmanov filed a lawsuit against Hristov and Weiner, the drivers involved in the subsequent collisions and the owner of the pickup truck, alleging negligent failure to safely operate their respective vehicles. It was also claimed that the defendants were traveling at an unsafe speed and made other claims of negligence. The lawsuit did claim lost income.

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The Illinois Appellate Court has found that a rental car company, Enterprise Leasing, and the driver who rented the vehicle from it are not liable for a deadly drunken driving incident involving the rental car and the driver who was not the customer.

The Illinois First District Appellate Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by the estate of Laura Linderborg against Enterprise and David Soto, finding that they could not have foreseen the accident that eventually killed Laura Linderborg.

On April 2, 2012, David Soto rented a 2012 Nissan Altima from Enterprise. He parked the car at the house of his boss, Katrina Scimone, and left the keys there. Scimone’s boyfriend, Jesse Medina, took the car and drove it while he was drunk. Later that day he was involved in a fatal crash in Burbank, Ill., after colliding with Laura Linderborg’s car, killing himself and Linderborg, who survived for a while but died two months later from her injuries. Her medical bills totaled $1.34 million.

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Miguel Klesowitch filed a lawsuit against the defendant Chiquita Smith to recover for damages allegedly suffered as a result of the defendant’s negligence.  The trial judge granted summary judgment in favor of Klesowitch on the issue of defendant’s negligence only, leaving consideration of whether any of the plaintiff’s conduct was a proximate cause of his injuries and the amount of damages for trial.  At the trial before the jury, the judge admitted certain medical bills into evidence.  Portions of those bills had been written off by the medical providers.  The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for the full amount of the medical bills admitted into evidence.  The verdict was affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded back to the trial court with instructions.

On June 28, 2008, the plaintiff, Miguel Klesowitch, alleged that the defendant, Chiquita Smith, drove her car into the Klesowitch vehicle.  Smith drove her vehicle into an intersection without stopping at a stop sign and into the left side of Klesowitch’s vehicle.  Smith admitted not stopping because she did not see the stop sign.  The lawsuit complaint alleged that Klesowitch was injured physically, by expending large sums of money for medical expenses to be cured of said physical injuries and by lost money from being unable to pursue his usual occupation.  Smith filed an answer and affirmative defenses alleging that Klesowitch was guilty of contributory negligence.

In July 2014, Klesowitch filed a motion for summary judgment “on the issue of liability.”  Klesowitch’s motion asserted that at Smith’s deposition, she “set forth testimony indicating that she was clearly at fault for the accident.”

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On April 2, 2009, Michelle Odom was filing a document at a storage tower near her workstation in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange when her phone rang. She turned to answer her phone, but the knit sleeve of her sweater caught on the open drawer of the storage tower. The tower fell on Odom, knocking her to the floor.

Odom alleged that she has developed “severe complex regional pain syndrome” and is now permanently disabled. In July 2012, Odom filed a lawsuit against Environetx LLC, Steelcase Inc. and Office Concepts Inc. Steelcase was the manufacturer of the storage tower. Office Concepts was a distributor for Steelcase and sold the storage tower to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Environetx was subcontracted by Office Concepts for the installation of the tower.

The tower in question came with instructions and caution labels, warning that the cabinets should be “ganged” together or against a wall to prevent them from toppling, but also specified that “counterweights are not required with vertical drawer towers.”

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James Folta was diagnosed with mesothelioma 41 years after he was alleged to have been exposed to asbestos fibers while working for Ferro Engineering.

Because Section 6(c) of the Illinois Workers’ Occupational Diseases Act bars asbestos claims unless they are filed with the workers’ compensation commission within 25 years of the last on-the-job exposure to asbestos, Folta’s only ground for recovering from Ferro was to argue that the exclusive-remedies provisions in the Workers’ Compensation Act and the occupational diseases statute do not apply on the grounds that his injury was “not compensable.”

The Illinois Supreme Court explained in Meerbrey v. Marshall Field & Co., 139 Ill.2d 455 (1990), that the exclusive-remedy section of the compensation statute does not bar a tort case against an employer if “the employee-plaintiff proves: (1) that the injury was not accidental; (2) that the injury did not arise from his or her employment; (3) that the injury was not received during the course of employment; or (4) that the injury was not compensable under the act.” Meerbrey, 139 Ill.2d at 463, citing Collier v. Wagner Castings, 81 Ill.2d 229 (1980).

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Vanessa Noboa used Orbitz to book and pay for a room at the Barceló Los Cabos Palace Hotel on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico.

She signed up for an all-terrain vehicle tour with Rancho Carisuva. During the tour, the all-terrain vehicle overturned and killed Noboa. Her family brought a lawsuit against Rancho Carisuva and Barceló Corporación Empresarial, a Spanish corporation. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The presiding judge granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss for lack of specific personal jurisdiction. Neither of the defendants had personal contact with Illinois.

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On July 14, 2007, 16-year-old Eric Jones went to the city of Springfield’s public beach with his brother and cousins. The public beach is located on Lake Springfield. Eric did not know how to swim. He was in the water at least chest-deep when he disappeared beneath the surface. His relatives, brother and cousins did not report him missing for an unknown number of minutes. The nearest lifeguard had not noticed Eric’s disappearance.

As soon as the lifeguards were notified, they began searching the lake for Eric. It took several minutes to find him in the opaque water. They were unable to resuscitate him.

Eric was survived by his mother and brother. The family filed a lawsuit arguing that the city lifeguards violated the city’s internal guidelines regarding where the lifeguards would be located, chose not to immediately form a line search in the area where Eric was last seen, and were guilty of willful and wanton misconduct for those failures. It was alleged in conclusion that the city’s actions or inactions were the cause of Eric’s drowning death.

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