Chicago Wrongful Death Law Blog

Periodically we hear stories concerning neglect of patients in our Illinois nursing homes. As it turns out, nursing home abuse is unfortunately wide spread throughout the nation because of a system that invites corruption and neglect.

It is estimated that owners of nursing homes take in $32.9 million from Medicare and Medicaid, but such funds are often pocketed by the owners and never used for resident care. Little attention paid to temperature control, trash piling up in residents' rooms, the presence of rodents, and problems with mold and mildew were just some of the problems that have been routinely reported in many nursing homes.

A Chicago Tribune employee was on his way to office one early morning. Though Chicago police had received several reports of a driver heading the wrong way down the Bishop Ford Freeway, authorities were unable to stop this driver before crashing into the vehicle driven by the man on his way to work. The longtime employee was thus killed in the fatal car accident.

The car driven by the suspected drunk driver after striking the other vehicle then veered off and struck a tanker truck. The driver had a suspended license and did not have the proper insurance. The car accident was serious enough that it resulted in all inbound lanes being closed to the freeway for at least five hours. The freeway remained closed while authorities investigated what occurred.

A federal court's ruling concerning workers' compensation claims and denial of benefits could ultimately have consequences in Chicago. The court ruled that too often injured workers were denied such claims because employers or employers' insurers and doctors conspired to come up with fraudulent medical reports favorable to the employer's insurance company and unfavorable to the worker's claim.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was put into place to prevent parties from conspiring to commit such fraudulent acts. The federal court ruled that workers denied workers' compensation claims based upon this conspiracy could bring a claim based under RICO against their employer and employer's insurer.

A former marine recently died of mesothelioma. This individual had sued a number of companies that possibly responsible for his exposure to asbestos, but he unfortunately died before there was any payoff by the defendants.

His lawyers now allege that defendants made the sickened man endure hours and hours of deposition testimony. His doctors had expressed concern that he could not endure more than 12 hours of deposition testimony, but the defendant's lawyers put him through as much as 25 hours of depositions. The plaintiff finally collapsed after the deposition testimony ended and died one day later.