Articles Posted in Rear-End Crash

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The appeal in this case comes out of a jury’s verdict in favor of the plaintiff, Lanisha Blockmon, who was special administrator of the Estate of Walter Blockmon III. On July 11, 2014, Blockmon was driving on I-80 near the city of Country Club Hills, Ill., when his vehicle was hit from behind by the vehicle driven by the defendant, Jakobi McClellan. Blockmon died from his injuries. After his death, Lanisha Blockmon filed a 5-count fourth amended complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County naming McClellan, Vector Marketing Corp. and Cutco Corp. as defendants.

Vector Marketing sells and distributes cutlery and other kitchen equipment manufactured by Cutco. The lawsuit alleged that in July 2014, McClellan, the defendant, was a sales representative for an agent of Vector and Cutco, and that at the time of the incident, McClellan was traveling between sales calls in his role as a Vector sales representative.

McClellan admitted that at the time of the incident he was using the mapping and GPS functions on his cell phone to check the location of his next sales call and to determine how late he was running, and that he was not looking at the road.

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Scott Stevenson, 52, was driving his utility van on a busy interstate highway when his vehicle rear-ended a broken-down truck that had been stopped in the middle lane for fourteen minutes.

Stevenson died from the injuries he sustained in the impact of the vehicles. He had been a self-employed plumber earning about $120,000 per year. Stevenson was survived by his wife and adult daughter.

The Stevenson family sued the truck driver, Richard Delcore, and Simpson Group Inc., which leased the truck and employed Delcore.

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Johnny Williams, 67, was operating his tractor on a roadway when a dump truck driven by Rubin Harvey for Oxford Construction Co. rear-ended his tractor at a high speed. The impact caused Williams to be thrown off the tractor and into a ditch. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple fractures and other injuries.

Williams spent six weeks in a hospital before being transferred to a rehabilitation facility. He now requires 24-hour care and suffers from memory loss and seizures.

He had earned approximately $15,000 per year and incurred $1.2 million in medical expenses.

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On Dec. 4, 2013, the plaintiff, Keenan Lane, 21, was stopped at a red light southbound on North Greenmount Road about 600 feet north of Lebanon Avenue in Shiloh, Ill. At that point, a car driven by 63-year-old Anne Flahiv rear-ended Lane’s vehicle. As a result of the crash, Lane’s car was totaled, and he suffered injuries to his neck and lower back.

Lane’s treatment included emergency room care, visits with his primary care physician and physical therapist, as well as orthopedic treatment.

His orthopedist diagnosed peripheral tears in his lumbar spine and an annular tear in his cervical spine. He reported medical expenses that totaled more than $48,000.

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A Jackson County, Ill., jury has signed a verdict for $2.3 million for Frank Adams who suffered a shoulder injury and abnormal scarring condition after he dodged a vehicles in a rear-end crash.

Adams was working as an Illinois Department Transportation (IDOT) flagger at the time of the crash. He sued pest-control company Terminix and its employee Brian Doll in 2015 claiming that Doll consciously ignored several school-zone signs and IDOT work warnings before causing the collision with an Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) van in March 2014.

The jury’s verdict, which included $2,500 in punitive damages, is the highest verdict ever reported from Jackson County, Ill., according to the Jury Verdict Reporter. Adams had stopped the Illinois Department of Corrections van driven by Charles Ray Borum, which contained eight inmates at the time, because IDOT workers were trimming trees along Illinois Route 146 near Pope County High School.

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Bert Jessmon and his father worked for a private trash collection company. They were on a route with Jessmon’s father driving and Bert Jessmon riding on the back of the truck. The Jessmons stopped on a rural two-lane highway and Bert Jessmon left the truck and began walking to pick up a trash can. At the same time, a W.A. Kendall & Co. wood chipper truck stopped behind the trash truck.

Elizabeth Smiley, who was traveling in the same lane, came upon the truck and stopped behind them. When Smiley confirmed that the oncoming lane was clear, she began passing the vehicles on the left. As she was nearly passed the chipper truck, the driver pulled out, striking her car. The Smiley car then spun clockwise striking and pinning Bert Jessmon between the car’s driver side and the rear of the garbage truck.

Bert Jessmon sustained severe crush injuries to both of his legs and his right leg was nearly severed above the knee. His femoral artery was severed and he began bleeding profusely. A bystander with Army medical experience applied a tourniquet while emergency responders were called.

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On Jan. 27, 2011, there was a multi-car crash on Interstate 294 in the Chicago suburbs. Kevin Boyd George drove his car into the rear of another car and that car was in turn pushed into a car driven by the plaintiff, John Larkin.

Larkin’s car was pushed into the car in front of him. He filed a lawsuit on March 1, 2012 claiming that he suffered “numerous injuries” due to the negligent driving by the defendant, Kevin Boyd George.

At the scene of the crash, Larkin did not report any injury, but on the following day he did go to an urgent care center reporting pain in his left ankle. Larkin ultimately had to undergo two orthopedic procedures to correct the pain and reported continuing pain, which prevented him from participating in family and recreational activities that included golf and basketball, which he claimed to have participated in regularly.

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Cornell Smith, 38, was driving on a highway when he stopped for the traffic ahead. Traffic was backed up from an off-ramp exit. While he was sitting in his stopped SUV, he was rear-ended by Ross Keys, who was driving a cargo van for Tri-Cal Distributors LLC.  On impact, Smith was wearing a seatbelt, but he was thrown upward in his seat and struck his head on the roof of his SUV. He felt immediate head and neck pain. Smith was transported to the nearest hospital. He was diagnosed there with a concussion and cervical sprain.

In the months following the crash, Smith developed chronic headaches, neck and mid-back pain and numbness and tingling in his fingers. The radiology imaging revealed cervical disk and facet damage, including an indentation of the ventral cord at C5-7.

He underwent conservative treatment and medication, but the pain interfered with his ability to perform his job as a police officer.

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On March 9, 2013, the defendant Roy H. Verdin was driving eastbound on 159th Street in Orland Park, Ill.  His vehicle rear-ended Christina L. Barron’s car at 94th Avenue and pushed it into two other vehicles ahead of her.

Barron, 46, maintained that she suffered a torn rotator cuff injury along with soft tissue sprains. She lost one week of work as a retail sales clerk. Her medical expenses were $40,000.

The defendant argued that the crash was only a “fender bender.”  It was maintained that no airbags deployed and that the plaintiff’s rotator cuff tear was not related to this occurrence.

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The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) concluded at an all-day conference that deadly truck underride crashes could be prevented when passenger vehicles crash into a tractor-trailer truck or straight struck from behind.

In underride crashes, a passenger car crashes into the rear of a tractor-trailer truck and the car ends up jammed under the truck, flattening the passenger compartment and injuring or killing the car’s driver and passengers. Underride crashes are extremely dangerous and many times lead to serious injuries and/or death. Underride incidents also can occur when bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists slide under the truck body.

There are federal rules and regulations that require trailers and some straight trucks to be equipped with rear underride guards, which are steel bars designed to prevent vehicles from sliding under the backs of trucks or trailers. The same rules and regulations imposed by the federal government have been in place since 1953. Now there is movement to amend rules of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is considering a new standard for the guards to make them stronger.

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