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Personal Injury Law

Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

Personal injury issues.
By Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti

Post Frequency: 5.6/day

Last Entry: June 10, 2020 at 09:37:56

Case Law Update: Jury Instructions in Medical Malpractice Cases

Posted on November 21, 2008
In Matarese v. Buka, No. 1-06-2276 (10-31-08) the fifth division appellate court found that because the 2006 version of IPI 150.01, defining professional standard of care, could cause jury confusion by leading jury to believe that it can disregard expert testimony and substitute its own definition of reasonable care, the trial court properly gave instruction to the jury based on 2005 version of IPI in plaintiff's trial for medical malpractice against ophthalmologist for alleged negligent cataract surgery...

Death caused by medical malpractice misdiagnosis

Posted on November 21, 2008
More than ten years ago, a woman was given Dilantin because her doctor misdiagnosed her, wrongfully thinking that she suffered a stroke. She had not suffered a stroke. The drug made the woman develop Stevens-Johnson Sydrome. The woman died a horrific and painful death after this medical malpractice...

Illinois Justices Consider Constitutionality of Medical Malpractice Caps

Posted on November 20, 2008
Illinois? Supreme Court is examining the constitutionality of caps lawmakers placed on lawsuit awards. State legislators passed a law that capped non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, in medical malpractice suits to $500,000 for doctors and $1 million for hospitals in 2005...

Jury Awards Family $3.6 Million in Medical Malpractice Case

Posted on November 19, 2008
A jury has returned a $5.8 million medical-malpractice verdict in the wrongful death of a 47-year lawyer whose untreated mole turned into a skin cancer that spread to his brain. The award will be reduced to $3.6 million due to the state?s cap on non-economic damages in medical-malpractice cases...

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Jury awards $20.5 Million in Medical Malpractice Case

Posted on November 18, 2008
A jury awarded $20 million medical malpractice settlement finding that a boy?s lasting medical problems caused by mistakes made at his birth. Jurors deliberated for about four hours before deciding that both the doctor and the hospital were negligent in their treatment of the mother who was giving birth to the baby boy...

Transplant Patient Files Medical Malpractice Suit After Getting HIV

Posted on November 18, 2008
A 33 year old woman recently filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the University of Chicago Medical Center alleging she contracted HIV and Hepatitis C after receiving a kidney transplant. According to the lawsuit, the woman claims U of C failed to warn her that her donor was a gay man with multiple sexual partners...

Judges Reverse Medical Malpractice Ruling

Posted on November 15, 2008
All five state Supreme Court justices reversed an order granting summary judgment for a woman who sued a hospital as a parent her 13-year-od. They remanded the suit to the trial court seeking to hold the hospital liable for spinal injury that paralyzed her daughter...

Heart Drug Digiteck recalled 5 Days after Consumer Dies

Posted on November 15, 2008
An elderly woman had been taking the Digitek heart drug in belief that it would protect her against future heart attacks. She then died while taking the drug just 5 days before the drug maker, Actavis Totowa, issued a Class I Digitek recall. The elderly woman?s caretaker noticed that after she started taking the medication she was becoming weak, having breathing problems and shortness of breath...

Medical malpractice lawsuits filed against eye doctor

Posted on November 14, 2008
The eye doctor has been sued for medical malpractice at least 17 times during his career. He is now the subject of a class-action medical malpractice lawsuit filed by individuals who claim that the eye doctor falsely advertised laser vision corrective...

Medical Malpractice Caps Argued in Illinois Supreme Court

Posted on November 13, 2008
Lawyers argued that a 2005 law limiting the amount of money juries may award in medical malpractice cases unfairly targets those most seriously injured who deserve the most compensation in the Illinois Supreme Court. Proponents of the law asked the court not to limit what they called lawmakers? attempt to stem a health care crisis...

Reports Show Hospitals have High Rates of C. diff

Posted on November 12, 2008
A report shows that a germ that wreaks havoc in people?s guts is infecting hospital patients at a much higher rate than had been previously estimated. The study found that slightly more than 1 in every 100 hospital patients are struck by Clostridium difficle which is commonly referred to as C...

Hepatitis scare medical malpractice lawsuit not certified as a class action

Posted on November 10, 2008
A medical malpractice lawsuit filed as a result of unsafe medical malpractice practices that caused over 100 people to develop Hepatitis C, has denied a request to certify a class action lawsuit for thousands of former patients. The patients are claiming emotional distress stemming from the testing they underwent after discovering the problems at the clinic...

Hospital Agrees to Pay Injured Amputee

Posted on November 09, 2008
A woman lost three limbs after she contracted a flesh eating bacteria while receiving hospital care after the birth of her baby. She then claimed negligence by the hospital doctors and staff at the hospital caused the necrotizing fasciitis. The lawsuit brought by the woman and her attorneys asked for damages and compensation for a lifetime of care stemming from permanent and disabling injuries due to medical malpractice...

Woman Awarded in $1.6 Million Medical Malpractice Suit

Posted on November 08, 2008
A woman received a $16 million medical malpractice lawsuit against a hospital and other entities for what the woman termed ?catastrophic? injuries cased by severe infections associated with a Caesarean section. The woman filed the medical malpractice lawsuit in 2006 that described infections she said began in the hospital that ultimately required the amputation of both legs, her right arm and one of her fingers...

State?s Supreme Court Strikes Down Medical Malpractice Law

Posted on November 07, 2008
A state?s supreme court has struck down a piece of a 2003 medical malpractice lawsuit reform effort, calling it an unconstitutional special law. The measure required parties filing medical malpractices lawsuits to give notice to the defendant within 18 days or else they will have their case dismissed...

Case Law Update: One Year Statute of Limitations for Physicians Employed by Municipal Corporations

Posted on November 04, 2008
Thede v. Kapas, No. 3-07-0757 (10/21/08) concluded that there is no issue of material fact; and that defendant, physician, is entitled to summary judgment dismissing plaintiff's complaint based on the one year statute of limitations then in existence for physicians employed by municipal corporations...

State?s Medical Malpractice Damages Cap Causes Controversy

Posted on November 01, 2008
A man has been told by lawyers that it?s economically unfeasible to litigate his complicated case because of a state?s medical malpractice reforms. The man is almost blind in any eye after a botched retina reattachment operation in August 2007. Additionally he has trouble with depth perception and peripheral vision...

Study Finds that Half of US Doctors are Prescribing Placebos to Patients Without their Knowledge

Posted on October 31, 2008
A study published last week in the British Medical Journal finds that half of US doctors prescribe placebos to their patients, instead of drugs necessary for their treatment. These placebos, the survey explains, are sometimes vitamins or drugs that will not help the patients? conditions...

Quickly Vetted Breast Cancer Treatments Are Highly Experimental

Posted on October 28, 2008
After a woman had a cancerous lump removed from her breast, her doctor referred her to a specialist who uses a newer form of treatment where radioactive ?seeds? are inserted in the tumor site. This procedure could be completed in only five days instead of the six weeks typically required for conventional treatment...

$4 Million Award Upheld in Medical Malpractice Case

Posted on October 26, 2008
A state?s Supreme Court has upheld a $4 million award given to the family of a woman misdiagnosed with cancer. The woman was then given a lethal dose of painkillers. The court did throw out the $500,000 awarded in punitive damages to the woman?s family...

Court Rules Judge Admitted Improper Evidence in Medical Malpractice Case

Posted on October 25, 2008
A state?s Supreme Court ruled that a circuit judge allowed improper evidence to be admitted in a medical malpractice case. The medical malpractice suit alleged that the victim suffered a pulmonary embolism as a result of physician malpractice. After the doctor did not respond to the complaint and summons, the judge entered a default judgment against her...

Doctor Strongly Criticized In His Methods of Distributing Medication

Posted on October 24, 2008
A family doctor who wrote prescriptions that could be linked to three deaths is still seeing patients, despite being under investigation by state authorities. His medical license has not been suspended, nor has his practice been restricted, even though several complaints against him have led to an investigation by the state medical examiners board...

Family Awarded $11.4 Million in Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

Posted on October 23, 2008
A jury awarded more than $11.4 million in medical malpractice damages to the family of a boy who suffered brain injuries from complications during his birth in August 2005. The jury found in favor of the plaintiffs who claimed their son?s brain injuries were caused by negligent care by a Hospital midwife and nurse during the delivery...

Minority Trauma Victims More Likely To Die Than Whites

Posted on October 21, 2008
Blacks and Hispanics who receive treatment for head injuries and other trauma are more likely to die afterward than whites with similar injuries and, regardless of race, trauma victims who lacked insurance died much more than those who were insured. The study offers the latest evidence of how race and insurance status affect patient outcomes...

Doctors Missed Heart Infection Signs 5 Times

Posted on October 20, 2008
A young man with a heart valve condition was misdiagnosed by doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. The heart valve condition led to an infection in his hearts and the hospital repeatedly misdiagnosed it by sending the man home with allergy medication once and instructions on visiting a back specialist another time...

Only 44% of People On Medicare Get Heart Stress Test Before Surgery

Posted on October 16, 2008
Less than half of all Medicare recipients get a stress test before having common non-emergency procedures to reopen blocked coronary arteries, despite the fact that The American Heart Associations recommend it. A cardiac stress test, which is used to measure blood flow to the heart during exercise, can help determine who?s likely to benefit from procedures such as balloon angioplasty, in which a tiny balloon is used to reopen a blocked artery...

M.R.I.s Do Not Always Find Injury

Posted on October 15, 2008
One woman had an MRI performed on her foot after she injured her forefoot running. The MRI at a local radiology center found nothing wrong, so she decided to take an anti-inflammatory and do low-impact workouts. However, when the pain got worse she saw a sports doctor who performed another MRI, and she discovered she had a stress fracture in her foot...

Failure to Diagnose Heart Attack Leads to Wrongful Deaths

Posted on October 15, 2008
The leading cause of death in the US is coronary artery disease, or narrowing of arteries supplying blood to the heart. This condition results in a heart disease and failure to diagnose can lead to wrongful death. Doctors oftentimes make mistakes in diagnoses including: failure to take seriously a patient?s complaints, failure to notice or understand the nature of a patient?s symptoms, failure to order the proper tests, failure to properly read or interpret test results, and failure to refer a patient to a specialist for further testing or treatment...

Chicago Surgeon Involved in Lawsuit for Inventing Heart Device and Implanting it in Patient Without Consent

Posted on October 15, 2008
A Chicago surgeon is being sued after implanting a device which he invented in a patient, allegedly without consent. The device, a Myxo ETlogix annuloplasty ring, was implanted in the patient in April 2006 by Dr. Patrick McCarthy at Northwestern Memorial Hospital to fix the patient?s leaky heart valve...

Family Hopes to Settle for Ten Million Dollars

Posted on October 13, 2008
The family of one of the two victims in a fatal car crash is hoping to settle for ten million dollars in a wrongful death lawsuit. The victims were killed in a car accident after a woman, who was not supposed to be driving while taking medication, hit them...

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