Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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Scot Vandenberg and his wife maintained that their allegations in an unfiled tort complaint triggered insurance coverage for an accident that injured Scot, paralyzing him during a party he attended on a 75-foot yacht.

Scot was severely injured when he fell off a bench at the edge of a top deck of the yacht to a lower deck. The original complaint he filed against the companies that owned and maintained the yacht (along with several corporate officers) alleged that the defendants were negligent because there was no railing on the upper level of the yacht.

Two of the defendants sued in this case were insured by Maryland Casualty under a policy that excluded coverage for bodily injury claims involving the ownership, maintenance or use of a watercraft.

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In a case involving Donald Howell, who was born with profound cognitive impairment and who had received a settlement of $11 million from a Chicago landlord from lead-poisoning, the issue here was, could the court “substitute judgment” on where his money would go at the time of his death? Relying on the “substituted judgment” doctrine, his co-guardians, Northern Trust Co. and LaTanya Turks, argued that Donald would want his money to go to Turks, his mother and full-time caretaker, rather than also being shared under Illinois Intestacy Law with family members, which included his father and ten half-siblings born to ten different women who allegedly had no significant role in his life.

Under the Illinois Probate Act, Section 11a-18(a-5) authorizes guardians to draft estate plans that depart from the default formula for distributing a decedent’s assets. That section of the statute, which refers to acting “in keeping with the ward’s wishes so far as they can be ascertained,” also says the “ward’s wishes, as best they can be ascertained, shall be carried out.”

In this probate matter, the “ward’s wishes” provisions were in conflict with the court- appointed guardian ad litem who opposed the estate plan suggested by Northern Trust and Turks. According to the guardian ad litem, the proposed estate plan was improper because Donald never had testamentary capacity and could not express any wishes about who would inherit his money on his death.

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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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