Articles Posted in Evidence

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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 Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District has reversed and remanded a case decided in the Circuit Court of Cook County. In August 2011, Virginia Jahrke arrived at the health club belonging to Capital Fitness Inc. for her usual one-hour training session.

After she finished her session, she went into a locker room and changed and started to walk out. As she was walking, she slipped and fell on something wet on the floor.

On Dec. 7, 2011, Jahrke filed a lawsuit against Capital in the Circuit Court of Cook County alleging that the company chose not to properly maintain the locker room or provide warning of a slippery floor and that its negligence caused her to slip and fall, injuring herself.

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has affirmed a decision by the district court judge regarding circumstantial evidence without an expert witness. In this case, the plaintiffs, Howard Piltch and Barbara Nelson-Piltch, were driving in their 2003 Mercury Mountaineer in 2006 when they were involved in an accident; the airbags of their vehicle did not deploy. After the crash, the couple repaired their car, but did not confirm whether the restraint control module, which monitors a crash and electronically decides whether to deploy airbags, was reset during or after repair work.

One year later, the Piltches were driving the car when it hit a patch of black ice. This caused the car to slide off of the road and hit a wall. On impact, none of the cars’ airbags deployed.

After the second crash, the couple had their Mountaineer repaired at the same repair shop that had repaired the car after the 2006 incident. In 2009, the Piltches sold the car to a mechanic who reprogrammed the vehicle’s black box, wiping out the data that might have been remaining from either of the two crashes.

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Amarjit Khunkhun was a 43-year-old truck driver when he was found burned to death in the cab of his truck owned by his employer, GMG Trucking of Fresno, Calif. Khunkhun was survived by his wife and three children. The state fire investigators found that the fire started inside the cab and concluded that Khunkhun’s use of a portable stove might have caused the fire. No stove or propane tanks were found in the cab during the investigation.

Khunkhun’s family, with the assistance of attorneys Bill Robins, Hector Longoria, Mohinder S. Mann and Gruinder S. Mann, filed a lawsuit against GMG Trucking and its owners. The family’s attorneys also hired a fire cause-and-origin expert. That investigation showed the fire started beneath the truck, not by a stove or propane tanks. A truck mechanic expert determined that transmission fluid had leaked from the truck’s transmission, where it was ignited by the cab’s exhaust system and other hot components. Because of the fire underneath the cab, carbon monoxide vapors leaked into the cab where Khunkhun was left unconscious, and then the truck cab burst into flames resulting in Khunkhun’s death.

The lawsuit brought against GMG Trucks and its owners alleged negligent maintenance and inspection of the trucks. The family alleged that the owners were aware of the transmission leak in the tractor, but chose not to repair it in violation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

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Sandra Gibbs hired the defendant Blu-Sky Industries to do work on a septic tank on her property at 30658 S. Ashland Ave. in Beecher, Ill. The Village of Beecher is located in Chicago-area suburbs in Will County, Ill. On Dec. 8, 2009, Gibbs, 31 years old at the time, stood in her driveway supervising the work as the defendant Blu-Sky Industries’ workers completed the project. She was walking back toward her house when a Blu-Sky employee, Jacob Courtney, began backing up his truck, which was attached to a trailer.

Courtney did not see Gibbs and hit her twice, causing her to fall onto the trailer with a direct blow to her outstretched right arm. The truck continued in reverse with Gibbs halfway on the trailer and halfway on the ground for 10 additional feet before the truck finally stopped.

Gibbs suffered a right shoulder impingement with a partial thickness tear of the supraspinatus tendon in the rotator cuff, requiring injections and eventually surgery that consisted of arthroscopic distal clavicle excision and subacromial decompression. A subacromial decompression of the shoulder is a surgery designed to increase the size of the subacromial, which is designed to reduce the pressure on the muscle. In order to make room, the surgery involves cutting the ligament and shaving away the bone spur on the subacromial bone. This permits the muscle in that space to heal.

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On Sept. 8, 2011, the defendant 31-year-old Anna Tudzich, was driving a car that rear-ended John Dodaro’s car on southbound Harlem Avenue near 47th Street in Lyons Township, Ill. The 30 mph impact caused Dodaro to experience immediate neck and back pain and significant damage to his pickup truck and the defendant’s vehicle as well.

Dodaro was a 40-year-old carpenter who was transported from the scene by an ambulance. He alleged that the collision aggravated his pre-existing degenerative lumbar disc and caused a new onset of cervical pain. Dodaro had longstanding prior lumbar complaints and had undergone physical therapy one day before this crash. However, the plaintiff had no previous history of cervical complaints.

An MRI that was done in October 2011 showed herniated discs at C5-6 and C6-7 with a small herniation at C4-5. Dodaro underwent a cervical epidural injection in February 2012 and bilateral cervical facet joint injections in April 2012. Dodaro’s treating orthopedic surgeon said he would require future cervical spine surgery although future medical expenses that were originally claimed were withdrawn at trial.

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Allen Zunner got out of his car to pump gas at a convenience store gas station when he fell on black ice and diesel fuel, which had settled on the concrete pavement around the gas pump. Zunner, 53, suffered a massive torn right rotator cuff injury and underwent two surgeries.

Zunner’s medical expenses were more than $44,000. Although the second surgery was a success, Zunner has limited range of motion in his right shoulder. He also has scarring at the surgical site.

Zunner sued the convenience store claiming that it chose not to warn customers about the known leaky gas pump. The lawsuit also claimed a failure to maintain the gas pump and the surrounding area around it. There was no lost income claimed by  Zunner.

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On June 21, 2012, Matthew Lyman, 19, was driving his bicycle northbound on by the defendant, Thomas Garcia. Garcia’s car was traveling westbound on Congress Parkway. Matthew sustained a fractured left wrist, which required open reduction internal fixation with a plate and ten screws. A 3-inch surgical scar was left on his wrist, he had road rash on the left side of his torso and his left arm. He also suffered permanent discoloration of the skin on his left arm from the road rash.Lyman had $34,332 in medical expenses along with $3,800 in lost time from his job as a bicycle mechanic.

He argued that he entered the intersection (Congress and Michigan) on a green light and that the light was yellow when the crash occurred. The defendant Garcia argued that his light was green as he approached and entered the intersection and there were no vehicles or bikes when he entered it. Garcia maintained that Lyman ran a red light on his bike.

Garcia said Lyman and his friend, who was on another bike, were one-third of a block away from the intersection when their light changed to yellow. They decided to pedal faster to beat the light instead of slowing down and stopping. The light turned red prior to the crash, and Garcia could not see Lyman before the impact because Lyman came from his driver’s side behind the mirror, which was where the initial point of contact occurred.

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The Illinois Appellate Court has affirmed a defense verdict in a multi-vehicle crash on an icy Indiana highway that caused severe injuries to motorists. The big issue in the case was which state’s law should be applied at a Cook County Circuit Court jury trial.

On Dec. 26, 2007, Clifford Ruse, a truck driver for Harvey, Ill.-based Envirite of Illinois Inc. was driving eastbound on Interstate 80/94 in Hammond, Ind., when he was struck by an SUV whose driver had lost control on a patch of black ice.

Ruse swerved his truck to the left and hit the highway’s median wall. On impact, the container of mill dust in tow was detached from his truck and that container crossed into the westbound lanes of the interstate highway. The plaintiff in the case, Daniel Kovera, was one of several drivers injured when the container landed on their cars. In March 2008, Kovera and his wife filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill.

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On May 8, 2011, Mason Brandstedter was driving on Route 59 in West Chicago, Ill., around 1:30 a.m. It was then that he discovered what appeared to be a dog, which was lying on the road and had clearly been injured. Brandstedter, 21, stopped his car facing southbound in the median turn lane and exited his car to see if he could help what amounted to a dying dog. Brandstedter recognized the dog and thought it belonged to a friend. Brandstedter and the dog were both partially in the northbound left lane and partly in the center turn lane.

Brandstedter was crouched down next to the dog talking on his cell phone with the dog’s owner, who Brandstedter knew, and with his back to approaching northbound traffic. He was hit by the defendant Richard Aubert’s car, which was northbound.

Brandstedter suffered a partially torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder and a partially torn labrum in his right hip, both of which required arthroscopic surgery. In addition to $85,776 in past medical expenses, he lost six months of work as a cabinet maker because of his injuries.

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