Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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In a case lawyers usually refer to as a slip and fall matter, Virginia Bruns sued the City of Centralia when she fell on a raised section of a public sidewalk while going to an eye clinic.  The city’s records showed that the roots of a nearby tree caused the sidewalk to crack and another person had tripped at the same place. 

The eye clinic also had reported the condition to the City of Centralia and offered to remove the tree on its own.  The city’s tree committee refused the clinic’s offer due to the historic significance of the tree, even though the danger was open and obvious.  It was reasonably foreseeable that a patron of the clinic might be distracted while walking to the clinic. 

Under the circumstances, the question for the Illinois Supreme Court is whether the city’s alleged breach of its duty of reasonable care should have been a fact question to be determined by a jury. 

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A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago naming several United States and Canadian companies as defendants.  The allegations in the complaint allege that these companies acted on a medical discount scam that targeted seniors. 

According to the FTC’s lawsuit, seniors in the United States were victims of deceptive telemarketing telephone calls that proposed phony discounts on prescription drugs.  Some of the calls even pretended to be associated with Social Security, Medicare or a medical insurance company.

According to the FTC, the telemarketing phone calls pitched a prescription drug discount card that would supposedly provide big discounts or even free subscription drugs for seniors.  Many of the victims believed they needed to purchase this card in order to continue to receive Social Security benefits, Medicare or other medical insurance.  The sale of the discount card was a part of the scam.  Discount cards that these companies were selling to seniors were actually free by simply calling a toll-free telephone number or visiting a website. 

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James Werner, who was also the defendant in this case, was the insurer producer for Office Furnishings Ltd. and Brathan Property LLC. Brathan Property owned a commercial building at 725 S. 25th Avenue in Bellwood, Ill., where Office Furnishings maintained a warehouse for its office furniture business.  Werner obtained insurance coverage for Office Furnishings and Brathan Property with American Family Insurance.

American Family required its own application to be signed by the insureds, in this case Office Furnishings and Brathan Property, which was done in a meeting on Dec. 17, 2002.

On Jan. 31, 2003, the roof of the warehouse shattered due to extreme cold weather and high winds, which caused serious property damage to the building and its contents. Office Furnishings and Brathan Property submitted a claim for their losses, including $1,349,872 in estimated roof replacement costs, $729,295 for inventory damage and $88,074, which represented the cost of a temporary roof.

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On June 25, 2007, 37-year-old Latroy Haynes maintained that he was walking eastbound along Cicero Avenue in the crosswalk on Archer Avenue in the city of Chicago.  He said he had a green light when he was hit by Leonarda Gonzalez’s speeding southbound car.

The impact caused Haynes’s leg to get caught in the vehicle’s wheel well.  He suffered displaced tibia-fibula fractures in his left leg.  This required open reduction internal fixation with placement of rods and screws.  Haynes had more than $32,000 in medical bills.

The defendant, Leonarda Gonzalez, contended that she had a green light and that Haynes darted out south of the crosswalk from between two vehicles in the adjacent southbound lanes to the right. Gonzalez, age 54, said she did not see Haynes before the impact.  The contact between Haynes and the Gonzalez vehicle occurred on the passenger side of her car.

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Liam O’Neill bought a 2000 GMC Jimmy SUV.  On July 3, 2001, his wife, Mary, was driving home in the SUV when the vehicle suddenly stopped.  She was in the eastbound lane of a 2-lane street.  Mary attempted to restart the SUV several times but it would not start.

She called a tow truck and her husband came out to help her push the SUV off the road. Mary then turned on her hazard lights and Liam pushed the car on the driver’s side, while steering. Mary pushed from behind.

While the O’Neills were trying to move the SUV, a car driven by Raymond Martin struck the rear of the SUV.  Liam was knocked to the ground and Mary’s legs were pinned between the two vehicles, which led to her legs being amputated above the knee.  Other cars had passed the O’Neills’ SUV while it was stopped without incident. The weather was clear and there were no visual obstructions or obstacles that hindered a view of the O’Neills’ stalled vehicle. 

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Craig Yale was a limited liability member of Wolcott LLC, a real estate development operation.  The two plaintiffs, Dr.Biplob Dass and Brett Garry, brought a lawsuit against Wolcott LLC, claiming they were duped when purchasing a garden condominium unit from Wolcott.

In the complaint it was alleged that the unit flooded several times;   they also discovered that the promised inspection and repair work that would have eliminated the water hazard had not been done by Wolcott.  At first, Dass and Garry did not know that Craig Yale was a member of the limited liability company. 

When Wolcott filed for bankruptcy protection and its debts were discharged, Dass and Garry sued Yale. The trial judge in the case dismissed the fraud claim against Yale based on §10-10 of the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act.  On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed by stating that Dass and Garry “do not argue that Yale defrauded them in his individual capacity and do not argue that Yale should be liable through the doctrine of piercing the corporate veil.”

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In a case decided in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Perry v. A.W. Chesterton Inc., it was determined that brakes located onto a rail car are a “part or appurtenance” to a locomotive and therefore the plaintiff’s state law asbestos claims were pre-empted by the federal Locomotive Inspection Act (LIA).  

Alice Perry brought this lawsuit on behalf of her husband, who died of asbestos-related injuries after installing and removing Railroad Friction Products Corp. brake shoes on rail cars.The locomotive is at the front of the train, which pulls the rail cars that carry the cargo of passengers or products.

Perry argued that the specific brakes and brake materials that her husband was exposed to were found only in rail cars and not locomotives. She maintained that her claim was not pre-empted by the LIA, which governs only locomotives.

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On Aug. 10, 2009, Dolores Trujillo was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Adam Delgado.The Delgado vehicle was involved in a collision.  Allstate Property and Casualty Insurance insured Delgado and his car.  The other car involved in the collision was insured by American Access Insurance Co.

Trujillo settled her claim against American Access for $20,000, which was the policy limit, and then settled her claim against Delgado for the $100,000 insurance policy limit on his Allstate policy. 

Trujillo also claimed $80,000 from Allstate as under-insured motorist coverage. The $80,000 represented the difference between Allstate’s maximum under-insured coverage $100,000 and the $20,000 she received from American Access.

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In August 2008, 30-year-old Kevin Harrison was working for Norfolk Southern Railway when he was exposed to acid fumes from a leaking barrel at Norfolk’s rail yard in Hammond, Ind.  The acid had been shipped from Michigan in an inter-modal container owned by the defendant K Line America, which is a subsidiary of a Japanese company.

One day earlier, the driver for the defendant trucking company, Mason Dixon Intermodal, had selected the K Line container from those available at the Mason & Dixon’s Lines Inc. yard in Dearborn, Mich.

The Mason Dixon Intermodal driver inspected the interior of the container and then drove it to the loading dock of Beaver Packaging & Crating, where Beaver employees loaded 40- to 55-gallon polymer drums filled with 30 percent strength acetic acid into the inter-modal container. 

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There are many toxic chemicals found in everyday products used by families and children alike.  The chemicals that are being studied were based on one of the following factors:·        

  •        Concern for children’s health (particularly reproductive or developmental effects);
    ·         Neurotoxic effects;
    ·         Persistent toxic qualities;
    ·         Probable or known carcinogens;
    ·         Products used by children;
    ·         Detection in bio-monitoring programs.

The EPA had previously drafted risk assessments that included chemicals found in flame retardants, chemicals added to fragrant ingredients in commercial and consumer products, methylene chloride found in paint stripper products and a chemical that is used as a spray-on protective coating.These are samples of the 83 chemicals whose risk assessments were completed in 2012.  In 2014, seven risk assessments are scheduled focusing on the effects of such chemicals’ exposure to humans and the environment.

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