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Illinois Supreme Court Modifies General Cautionary Instruction to Allow Juror Questioning of Witnesses

Effective July 1, 2012 Illinois Pattern Jury Instruction 1.01 has been modified to permit jurors to ask questions of certain witnesses.  This instruction and corresponding comments are in line with the recent adoption of Illinois Supreme Court Rule 243 that authorizes judges to let jurors submit written questions in civil jury trials. While individual judges have discretion to hammer out the procedural details, IPI 1.01 provides the framework. Judges will be the ultimate arbiters of the form and submission of the questions; but this new approach will give the jurors the ability to clarify testimony or explore facts that they deem significant. This is a positive step in integrating jurors into the fact-finding process that is emblematic of our extraordinary American justice system.

Check out new IPI 1.01

Law Offices of Laird M. Ozmon Represents Former NFL Players in Lawsuits

The Law Offices of Laird M. Ozmon now represents former NFL players in lawsuits stemming from the NFL’s conduct in actively ignoring and withholding medical proof that NFL players were subjecting themselves to long term health problems caused by concussions, sub-concussive events and ordinary repetitive contact. Several independent medical studies by renowned research universities have shown that NFL players are at great risk of developing severe neurological impairments. If you are a former NFL player, or you know a former NFL player, please encourage him to contact our offices at 815-727-7700. We will have him properly evaluated and take appropriate legal action on his behalf. Laird’s law firm is associated with one of the major law firms co-ordinating and directing the nationwide litigaton.

Weight-loss Surgery Led to Woman Losing Her Legs

JOLIET, Ill. (CBS)
A weight-loss surgery turned into a nightmare and cost a woman both of her legs.
CBS Chicago

 

CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini examines allegations that she was not properly monitored or treated, in part, because she was hospitalized during a holiday.

Life for Mary Beth Ruphard has changed drastically since last Thanksgiving. Weighing 278 pounds, she went to Provena St. Joseph Medical Center, in Joliet, for surgery to beat her battle with obesity.

“I just wanted to live longer, live better you know, said Ruphard. “I had diabetes (and) hypertension as my risk factors.”

Ruphard had weight-loss surgery in early November, then was back in the hospital for surgery to repair a perforation. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, she started complaining about her legs.

“I did complain to a nurse,” said Ruphard. “I say, ‘my legs, they are aching and they are tingling.’”

Read the full story

The Life of a Personal Injury Lawsuit

Personal injury claims include motor vehicle accidents, slip and fall cases such as falls on sidewalks, in stores, restaurants, or other premises, products liability for defective or unsafe products, professional negligence such as the negligence of a doctor or dentist, and other incidents that result in injury to the person. Personal injury may also include an injury to your reputation such as defamation when someone states something false about you to another person. It is important to retain a qualified personal injury attorney to represent you.

We want you to know what happens once you have entrusted your personal injury claim to us.

First we conduct a thorough investigation of your claim. This investigation will include obtaining all of the documentation of the incident and your injury, photographs and videos, as well as contacting any witnesses and obtaining their statements. We may consult with your treating physicians to determine your prognosis for recovery. We will also seek to determine if there is any insurance coverage and the amount of the coverage.

After completing our initial investigation, if we deem it appropriate we will contact the representative for the other party’s insurance company to attempt to settle the claim before filing a lawsuit. You must have completed your medical treatment and been given your prognosis by your physician before we can negotiate a settlement on your behalf. We will not settle the case without your authority.

If we are unable to reach a settlement, we will prepare and file a complaint against all potentially culpable defendants and place summons for service on the defendants with the sheriff. This initiates the lawsuit.

The defendants have a period of time to answer the complaint after they are served with the summons and complaint, usually thirty days. The defendant may answer the complaint or file a motion to dismiss if they believe they have grounds to defeat the lawsuit at the early stages. If the court denies the motion to dismiss, the parties are at issue and the case proceeds in court.

The parties then initiate discovery. This is a process of investigation where each party may obtain information from the opposing party and any witnesses on their behalf that may be used at trial. Discovery takes the form of written interrogatories, production requests, and requests to admit as well as oral discovery that consists of taking testimony of all parties and witnesses via deposition. We work hard to prepare you and make you comfortable when you give your deposition during discovery.

During the course of discovery it may be necessary for each side to retain a paid expert witness to testify on some aspect of the case. For instance, we may have to obtain an expert witness to testify that your injuries are permanent, or that the product you were injured by was defective, or that the defendant physician was negligent. The expenses for experts testifying on your behalf will be paid out of your recovery according to your contract with us.

After discovery is completed the judge sets a trial date. The judge may also recommend mediation or a pre-trial settlement conference. The amount of time between the filing of the lawsuit and the actual trial date varies greatly depending upon the extent of the injury, the number of witnesses, the court calendar, and other variables. In many cases, the process takes a minimum of two years. Notwithstanding this, the parties can engage in settlement negotiations at any time and the case may be resolved to your satisfaction before trial.

You can be assured that we will work tirelessly to minimize the stress of the litigation and get your case to a swift and satisfying conclusion.

The Most Important Steps to Take When You Are Injured in a Car Accident, Fall, or Suffer Other Personal Injury

#1 CONTACT THE AUTHORITIES.
Depending on the type and location of the injury, you should contact the police or notify the manager of the premises immediately following the injury. Make sure that you obtain contact information for the authorities to obtain any documentation of the incident.

#2 GET MEDICAL ATTENTION.
You should seek medical attention immediately.

#3 FOLLOW YOUR DOCTORS’ COURSE OF TREATMENT.
Once you have addressed your immediate medical needs after the accident, make sure that you follow medical advice and follow-up with your physician and/or any physicians to whom you were referred as directed.

#4 CONTACT YOUR INSURANCE CARRIER.
If you have insurance coverage that might apply such as automobile insurance, contact your insurance carrier to notify them of the incident.

#5 DO NOT SPEAK TO ANYONE REPRESENTING THE OTHER PARTY INVOLVED.
Oftentimes representatives from the insurance company for the other party or the other party herself will contact you, do not under any circumstances speak to anyone. The first person you should speak to is an attorney who you seek to hire to represent you and look out for your interests.

#6 PRESERVE THE EVIDENCE.
After you have received the proper medical attention and taken care of yourself make sure that you preserve any evidence that might be relevant to the cause of the accident, the injuries that were suffered as a result of the accident, property damage, and the location and circumstances of the accident. This could include photographs or videos of you and the injuries, the scene, the vehicles or objects involved, copies of medical records, police reports, names and phone numbers of witnesses, and anything else that you believe might have bearing on your case. It is also wise to keep a journal of the pain and suffering you have experienced as well as the limitations you have suffered as a result of your injuries.

#7 CONTACT A PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY AT YOUR EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY.
The sooner you retain a personal injury attorney, the sooner your rights and interests will be protected to give you the best advantage in recovering monetary compensation for your personal injury. Remember you have a limited amount of time to file a lawsuit under state law so the sooner you retain an attorney and get him working for you the better. We are happy to meet with you for a free consultation at your home or in the office when it is most convenient.

Beware of Medical Advice Over the Phone

In a heart-breaking case, the Illinois Appellate Court has decided that a six-week-old newborn who died of bacterial meningitis had no patient-relationship with the hospital that advised her parents to give her Tylenol and call her doctor in the morning. Even though the child had been a patient at the hospital on four recent occasions, and her mother called seeking medical advice after being unable to reach her pediatrician, there was no such relationship and the hospital had no duty to the child for purposes of pursing a medical malpractice case. In rendering such a decision the court will consider whether the patient knowingly seeks a physician’s services and the physician knowingly accepts patient. The court viewed the fact that the hospital representative dispensed medical advice as deficient to prove that he knowingly accepted the child as a patient. This is simply not enough to create a physician-patient relationship. The result would have been different had her pediatrician’s office given the advice since they had an ongoing relationship. This case serves as a reminder that hospitals cannot substitute for the ongoing physician-patient relationship. If you have no access to a regular physician and you or a loved one needs medical care you need to seek care in person, you can’t phone it in.

Estate of Kundert v. Illinois Valley Community Hospital, No. 3-11-0007 (Ill. App. Ct. 3rd Dist., January 10, 2012).

Carpenter Awarded $2 Million for Injury

The Herald News

After two days of deliberations, a Will County Circuit Court jury returned a $2 million verdict Tuesday night for a Joliet carpenter who suffered severe left hand injuries on a power saw.

The verdict for Robert Stukel, 52, of 631 Bethel Drive was against Black & Decker Corp. of Towson, Md

Stukel’s lawyer, Laird Ozmon, asked for $2.4 million damages in the product liability case.

The jury awarded that sum when it reported the verdict to Associate Judge Thomas Ewert after a total of 21 hours of deliberations. But the jury reduced the amount by 18 percent for Stukel’s contributory fault. The verdict can be appealed by the defendant.

Stukel was using a 10-inch Black & Decker miter saw when the accident occurred June 11, 1986, on a site for medical offices at 2 Uno Circle. One third of his palm and thumb were amputated.

Doctors at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park resewed the thumb with microsurgery, Ozmon said.

Stukel’s index finger had to be amputated a year later in one of eight hand surgeries.

The suit charged negligence because the company failed to put a right-side guard on the saw. The inventor, Donald Clark, testified he told company officials the device needed a right-side guard as well as one on the left side.

Clark said the company wanted to get the saw on the market in a hurry. He said he could not figure how to put on the guard and have the saw cut 2-by-4 lumber on edge. He said the company then told him to drop the idea.

Defense lawyer Daniel Kennedy told the jurors even if there had been a right-side guard, the accident would not have been prevented because of the manner in which Stukel was using the saw.

Daniel Montague, a Black and Decker safety expert, testified the supplemental guard would not have made any difference. He said the saw, was certified safe for use by Underwriter Laboratories.

The saw was bought in 1978. In 1982, four years before Stukel’s injury, Underwriters Laboratories changed standards, requiring the guard. Black & Decker did not recall the saw or notify purchasers of the new requirement, Ozmon said.

$10 Million in Punitive Damages Award – Law Bulletin

By CRIS CARMODY
Law Bulletin staff writer

A federal jury has ordered Black & Decker to pay $12 million – including $10 million in punitive damages – to a man whose left hand was nearly severed in an accident involving one of the company’s power saws.

The jury also awarded 50-year old bricklayer Jerry Ross $2 million in compensatory damages for the injury. U.S. District Judge George Marovich presided in the case.

Ross’s attorney, Laird Ozmon of Joliet, argued that the Black & Decker 10-inch Power Miter Box Saw (Model No. 7717, Type 1) was unreasonably dangerous because it was manufactured and sold without a right side lower blade guard.

Black & Decker’s attorney, Aligmantas Kezelis of French, Kezelis & Kominiarek in Chicago, countered that “no injury has ever occurred where the absence of the guard had anything to do with it.”

The power saw had guards on its upper right and left blades and lower left blade.

A former Black & Decker designer who worked on the saw, told the jury the saw was unreasonably dangerous without the lower right blade guard. He also said that he could have designed the appropriate guard if the company had given him enough time.

Kezelis said Black & Decker is considering appealing the verdict. “There is no condition in the product that made it dangerous. The product was safe,” he said.

Ross nearly amputated his hand while doing trim work on a house in 1983, according to Ozmon’s associate, James P. Stevenson. He was cutting molding at a full right 45-degree angle, and his hand drifted into the lower part of the right side of the blade. His hand was left hanging by a two-inch flap of skin, Stevenson said.

Ross’s hand has been re-planted, but doctors say he only has about 40 percent use of it. Members of the Will County bricklayers union, of which Ross was a member, testified that he is now unemployable as a bricklayer.

In 1982, Underwriters Laboratory mandated that all saws have a double-sided lower guard in order to receive UL approval, noted Stevenson.

Black & Decker sold at least 70,000 miter saws with single-sided blade guards between 1979 and 1982, Stevenson estimated. The saws have been sold with double-sided blades since 1982, he added.

Stevenson said he personally knows of at least four other injuries stemming from the unguarded right lower blade.

But Kezelis said that the unguarded lower right blade on the saws has not caused any injuries.

According to Ozmon, Black & Decker made no offer to settle the case. Ozmon asked the jury for about $2 million in compensatory damages and $10 to $20 million in Punitive damages.

The case was originally filed in Will County Circuit Court in 1990. Kezelis removed it to U.S. District Court later that year, Jerry L. Ross v. Black & Decker, Inc., No. 90 C 4439.

Court Rules Company Must Pay $7 Million

HERALD NEWS
By Les B. Kerr,
Herald-News Writer

In 1983, bricklayer Jerry Ross cut off his left hand while using a power saw.

The hand was reattached in surgery but Ross was disabled.

In 1990, a lawsuit was filed in Will County Circuit Court for Ross, 51, of Bloomington against Black & Decker, manufacturer of the 10-inch miter box saw he was using.

Now, two years later, the company has been ordered to pay $7 million in damages, reduced by the 7th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals from a $12 million jury verdict.

Ross’ lawyer, Laird Ozmon of Joliet, said the punitive damage jury award of $10 million in May 1991, reduced last month to $5 million by the appeals court, is among the largest in federal court records.

In addition to the $5 million punitive damages approved by the appeals court, it affirmed another $2 million in compensatory damages the jury awarded for Ross’ disability.

Punishment damages were asked for the company’s alleged failure to provide sufficient protection for users. Ozmon said the saw was sold without a right-side lower guard.

Black & Decker lawyers have asked for a rehearing since the appeals court October decision. Ozmon is opposing the rehearing. The court is expected to rule on the petition within three weeks.

Ozmon filed the suit here after a Will County Circuit Court jury awarded a Joliet man $2 million for an injury from the same model saw. The saw was discontinued in 1982. But Ozmon said the company never recalled the product. Ross was cutting window molding at the time of the accident. He lost use of 60 percent of the hand.

The appeals court ruled the punitive damages were valid but excessive.

Like Father, Son to Lead Attorneys – Joliet Injury Lawyer to Become President of State Association

Joliet injury lawyer to become president of state association

Reprinted from Chicago Tribune
By Joseph Tybor
TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Unlike other young lawyers just out of law school, Laird Ozmon did not have the concerns of where to work and what to do.

His father, Nat, was — and still is — considered one of the finest trial lawyers in Cook County as founder of a plaintiff’s injury firm, and there was little question that Laird Ozmon would start there.

Then, one Saturday in 1983, Laird asked his father out for breakfast at the famed Walnut Room at the Bismarck Hotel and dropped this bombshell: He was going to start his own personal injury firm in Joliet.

The move was in keeping with his independent youth — after high school, he had rejected an appointment to the Air Force Academy and sold vacuum cleaners for a time before deciding on law school.

But Laird’s father still was stunned. It would be a tough go, no guarantees.

Phil Corboy, well-known among Chicago’s plaintiffs’ lawyers, told Laird, “Kid, it takes a lot of guts to kick yourself out of the nest.” He then proceeded to feed Laird a few cases to help get him under way.

Nearly 15 years later, Laird Ozmon, 43, is well on his way. This week he will take over as president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, becoming the first personal-injury lawyer from Joliet to head the group.

His installation Friday also will mark the first time a father and a son have served as the group’s president. Nat Ozmon was president in 1969-70.
Laird Ozmon’s ascent follows some notable legal victories of his own, including two multi-million dollar verdicts against Black & Decker Inc., on behalf of two workers whose hands were amputated while they were using a miter saw that lacked a guard its designer had recommended.

Ozmon is taking over at a critical juncture in the association’s 25-year history and is expected to spearhead a change in the way it does political business, by focusing on Republicans as well as Democrats.

The association, considered one of the most influential lobbying groups in Springfield and a group that largely supports Democrats, still is reeling from the 1994 election that gave Republicans control of both houses of the Illinois legislature, as well as the governorship.

One of the results was an overhaul of Illinois tort law. Republicans said their aim was to reduce frivolous lawsuits and to cut legal costs for insurance companies, manufacturers and the medical profession.

The primary change was to limit the amount of money a person injured through someone else’s negligence could recover for pain and suffering and disability.

The trial lawyers and some consumer groups considered the legislation a gutting of victims’ rights.

Lawyers also considered the legislation a direct attack on them by the republican-controlled state government and their allies in manufacturing, business and medicine. Lawyers’ fees can be pegged to a percentage of the money recovered.

“They’re out to stick a knife into the heart of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association because certainly we have been a nemesis of theirs as they are to us.”

The trial lawyers already have fought back, raising more than a half-million dollars from their 2,200 members in a special assessment to challenge the law’s constitutionality.

Included in their strategy was hiring Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s most noted constitutional experts, to argue their case recently before the Illinois Supreme Court.

Lower court judges have declared parts of the law unconstitutional, and a 4-3 Democratic majority on the high court does not hurt the trial lawyers’ chances of nullifying it.

The trial lawyers have been among the biggest and most generous supporters of House Speaker Michael Madigan and his Democrats. Their latest report filed with the State Board of Elections shows political expenditures of $329.750 for the six months ending Dec. 31. That does not include individual contributions from their members.

Dues range from $10 to $1,000 a year, depending on how long a lawyer has been in practice. Those at the top of the profession are assessed for special projects such as the constitutional challenge to the reform laws.

“We make no bones about it,” Ozmon said. “We certainly are an organization that is politically active and will be politically active and we want the other side to know that.”