The third district court of appeals made an interesting decision concerning interspousal immunity. In Hand versus Hand, the parties were coming back from a vacation in Florida. In Indiana, they were involved in a one car accident where William was driving. Patricia, his wife got hurt. They filed suit in Illinois, where they lived. Indiana has a statute which says that a person cannot sue their spouse for personal injury involving the operation motor vehicle accident. Illinois law does not have such a law. In Illinois spouses can sue one another. This is obviously a suit to get the insurance money. Read more…
Category: Tort
I had a great guest on the air on December 23, 2017. The podcast his here. I went to a seminar at the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association on medical malpractice to keep up my continuing legal education. One of the speakers was a former president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, Pete Flowers. He is one of the name partners in Meyers and Flowers. They handle all sorts of cases, including medical neglect, and a fair amount of medical product liability, and other things. As he got up to speak he was introduced as having settled a case for $1 billion. After Read more…
Government entities are generally allowed immunity on many torts. This makes filing suit against a county or municipal government difficult. An example of that is Monson vs. City of Danville. In Monson the plaintiff fell on property owned by the City of Danville. She had left a store in the downtown district and was walking to her car when she walked into an inch of water that had formed on the side-walk by land. As she walked to the water she felt her left shoe strike something which caused her to fall. She suffered injuries for which she sued the city. Her Read more…
There has been little guidance from the courts in Illinois about electronic discovery. The Illinois Supreme Court has changed the rules a little bit to accommodate electronic issues. But for the most part we treat electronic discovery the same way we treat paper discovery. Facebook posts are discoverable to some extent and get used in the courts. Electronic documents are discoverable under the discovery rules. The appellate courts are slow to get cases because unless a litigant wants to take the time and money fighting about it the issues frequently just get resolved at the trial courts, without appellate review. Read more…
The appellate court recently held that offset language in uninsured / underinsured policies with plaintiffs injured by two defendants does not apply. Throwing out the offset language is counterintuitive to most lawyers. Lawyers are taught that you apply the language of the contract. This case reminds us that the terms of the insurance policy are applied generally, but that there are exceptions to general statements. In Tufano the court held that the policy holder must be placed in the same position as if each tortfeasor carried the same as amount of insurance as the injury victim. Furthermore, one tortfeasor’s payment cannot be Read more…
In civil rights cases plaintiff typically uses statute called section 1983. This statute which allows for the plaintiff to file suit for violations of their constitutional rights. The statute gives a person the right to file suit against a person who is a government employee for deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and law. The statute gives the plaintiff the right to recover attorney’s fees incurred. The attorney’s fee shifting provision makes this an attractive statute for victims of constitutional rights violations. The statute had been interpreted to provide liability if and only if the Read more…
In Illinois the Supreme Court adopted the “Illinois Rules of Evidence.” They are found here. As a practitioner, it is nice to have what is supposed to be the law on evidence spelled out in a simple document. I had the honor of attending the committee meetings and speaking about an objection to the way they were drafted on a certain technical issue. At the committee the people who drafted the rules indicated that they were not meant to change Illinois law on evidence. In other words, the rules are supposed to describe existing evidence law, not create new law. Since Read more…
In James Hausman versus Holland America the jury awarded 21.5 million in favor of plaintiff James Hausman. The case took nine days in federal court in Seattle. The plaintiff’s lawyer was Rick Friedman, author of books entitled Rules of the Road and Polarizing the Case, among others. Part 1 of my interview with Rick is below. ADD Rick-Friedman-Interview-Part-1.mp3 AUDIO Part 2 is below. ADD Rick-Friedman-Interview-Part-2.mp3 AUDIO I mentioned the books because they are great reads if you’re a plaintiff’s lawyer. I recommend both Rules of the Road and Polarizing the Case, although I have not read his other books. I Read more…
While in Illinois enforces personal-injury waiver forms, they have to be very specific. This was demonstrated in the case entitled Offord vs Fitness International, LLC (LA Fitness) 2015 IL App (1st) 150879. I suppose at the outset I should disclose that I am a member of LA fitness in Springfield Illinois. The injury we’re discussing occurred in Cook County Illinois, which is about three hours away. I like our local LA fitness, but have no particular affiliation with them other than I work out at one. In Offord, LA fitness had required the person using the facilities to sign a waiver, as Read more…
We had Christine Scott on the air with her lawyer quite some time ago to discuss her trial over vaginal mesh case. Partially as a result, James Ackerman got involved in some vaginal mesh litigation and is actively interested in these issues. There are currently 70,000 vaginal mesh cases pending in federal court in a multi-district litigation. Vaginal mesh is the biggest type of civil lawsuit pending in federal court. All the rest of other cases pending in all the federal courts do not total number of vaginal mesh cases pending. Christine Scott filed a complaint against Bard entered Dr. Read more…