Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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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 Illinois Central Railroad who sued it for breach of duty to provide employees with a safe place to work under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.

Smith was exposed to dust as a result of the use of asbestos products at the railroad yard, which included exposure to dust from the neighboring facility that made asbestos insulation. Smith had worked three months at the neighboring asbestos plant before he came to work for Illinois Central Railroad. He left that job because he said it was dirty.

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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 & Back Clinic alleged that Travis “represented that he was authorized to lease certain walls for advertising and that he had secured the requisite permits to place advertisements on the designated walls.”

However, in 2009, the clinic was notified that it had violated the Chicago Municipal Code by putting up advertisements without the proper city permits. The clinic was fined $3,000 and received another notice of violation. The clinic filed suit against Travis claiming breach of contract and fraud.

Travis and the clinic filed motions for summary judgment claiming that the other had failed to live up to its contractual obligations. The Circuit Court judge granted summary judgment in favor of the clinic finding that “Travis never secured the proper permits” and that he “did not perform his contractual obligations.” The Circuit Court judge awarded more than $10,000 in damages to the clinic. After dismissing a secondary claim against another party, Travis appealed.

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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 spooling machine. The board broke, causing Barto to fall about 4 feet onto the vessel’s deck.

Barto suffered soft tissue cervical injuries and lumbar injuries requiring a three-level fusion surgery.

Today Barto is unable to return to work and has incurred medical expenses of $138,800.

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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 bleach and hydrochloric acid, accumulated into the pump. When the pump restarted, these chemicals discharged into the water and a cloud of chlorine gas was released in the air.

Although at the time the chlorine gas was released, the Higginses were far enough away from the area, a niece of theirs was much closer. The Higginses received a call alerting them that the niece was in trouble, which prompted them to head in that direction. When they arrived, Kent Higgins inhaled an unspecified amount of chemical fumes that lingered in the air. Higgins visited the emergency room that day and was diagnosed with having a mild chemical exposure.

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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 or resistance.

The purpose of the act was to make it unlawful to discriminate against minorities by state and local governments who had for all times made it difficult, if not impossible, for blacks and other minorities to register to vote and thus to vote at all. Before 1965, the registration of blacks in most of the Civil War southern states was below 10%. By the end of 1965 after the passage of the act, approximately 250,000 African Americans were newly registered voters. Just 3 years later, more than 700,000 blacks would be registered to vote. Steadily the numbers increased over the years.

And in fact — and most important — African Americans and other minorities in the South were being elected to local state and federal political positions. These advances took place even in the face of efforts to curtail registration and to gerrymander districts into places where blacks and other minorities were unelectable mostly because of the racial makeup of these districts where whites would never or most likely not vote for a black candidate.

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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 the overhead crane cab, he fell while descending a 6-foot ladder and fractured his knee.

Anoman, 46, initially underwent open reduction internal fixation surgery with surgically inserted plates and screws, but eventually he required a total knee replacement arthroplasty.

Anoman maintained at trial that he expended $175,575 for medical expenses and lost $1,035,000 for past and future work and/or reduced earnings as a radio technician.

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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 left shoulder, which was unoperated. She will require periodic physical therapy treatment for the rest of her life. At trial, Baumrucker presented $25,641 in medical expenses and 13 weeks of lost time from work totaling $22,100. She is now retired.

Baumrucker asserted that the defendant cab company, Express Cab Dispatch, was willful and wanton in its failure to properly vet and clear the defendant taxi driver Luis Leal before hiring him as a one of its drivers, including its failure to check his prior driving record and investigate his employment background. The cab company also chose not to provide any training for him after he was hired.

Leal started working for Express Cab just a couple of weeks before this occurrence, and he reportedly had a bad driving record. The defendants admitted negligence, but denied willful and wanton misconduct and denied that the plaintiff was permanently injured.

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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 feet to the floor below.

As a result of the fall, Gitter, 53, suffered fractures to his left wrist, elbow, hip and four ribs. He also suffered a punctured lung. He underwent open reduction internal fixation of the fractures and surgery to reposition his ulnar nerve in his wrist.

Gitter was hospitalized for almost 2 weeks and underwent about 6 weeks of painful physical rehabilitation. Following that he was in outpatient for physical therapy. The past medical expenses that he incurred were paid by his workers’ compensation carrier.

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Marilyn Kayman was injured in a car crash on Jan. 30, 2009 in which her car was struck from behind by the car driven by the defendant Janice Matthews Rasheed. Kayman went to the emergency room at Hinsdale Hospital shortly after the crash but was discharged the same day. She continued to have neck pain and other symptoms.

Kayman visited her family practice physician on Feb. 4, 2009. She was subsequently referred to an orthopedic surgeon and was treated between 2009 and 2012. At the recommendation of the orthopedic surgeon, Kayman underwent physical therapy and was also prescribed medical devices to use at home to help alleviate her pain.

Kayman filed a lawsuit against Rasheed claiming the accident had caused her neck and back pain, headaches and other symptoms. Rasheed admitted negligence in striking Kayman’s car, but disputed the extent to which the 2009 collision caused Kayman’s alleged injuries.

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A driver of a tractor-trailer owned by J.M. Leasing was traveling on an interstate roadway where the conditions were poor because of snow. The tractor-trailer driver passed a slow-moving vehicle in the right lane. When the truck driver attempted to return to the right lane at about 55 mph, he lost control of the vehicle and the truck jackknifed. The plaintiff in this case, Christopher Spunar, was driving a sedan on the highway and was able to stop in time in front of the jackknifed truck. However, another tractor-trailer operated by Arthur Medeiros for Medeiros Trucking Inc. crashed into the Spunar vehicle. Yet another tractor-trailer driven by L.W. Miller Transportation also collided with the Spunar sedan.

 

Hope Spunar, 70, a passenger in Christopher’s vehicle, suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a traumatic brain injury and fractures to her neck at C2, her coccyx and her sacrum.

 

Her medical expenses were $85,000. Christopher Spunar, who was in his 50s at the time, suffered a fractured sternum, a bulging disk at C5-6 and a fractured clavicle among other injuries. Another passenger in the Spunar vehicle was Nicholas Spunar, 18, who suffered a hematoma, a fractured rib and a closed-head injury resulting in post-concussion syndrome.

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