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Recent Blog Posts
What Can I Do If My Child Was Seriously Injured in a Dog Attack?
While dog attacks are relatively rare, they can be a scary and dangerous experience, especially for young children. Dogs are often much larger and stronger than a child, and because of their similar height, children are at greater risk of sustaining serious and even life-threatening head and neck injuries in a dog attack. Winnebago County does not have any restrictions against owning pit bulls, but parents of young children should know that pit bulls are, statistically speaking, the most dangerous breed of dog when it comes to dog attacks on children and exercise particular caution around an unfamiliar pit bull. If your child has been attacked by a pit bull or any breed of dog and sustained injuries, you may be able to sue the owner to recover the cost of your child’s medical expenses and emotional trauma.
Are Dog Owners Responsible for Injuries Caused By Their Dogs?
My Elderly Parent Has Bedsores. Is This the Nursing Home’s Fault?
As our parents and loved ones grow older, moving independently and making everyday decisions about finances or healthcare can become extremely difficult. Physical illness, intellectual degeneration, and other ailments of aging can make caring for a family member at home impossible and the decision to place someone in a nursing home, while difficult, may be the best option.
We should all be able to trust a nursing home to provide the best care for our aging parents. Unfortunately, understaffing, poor training, and efforts to cut corners all happen sometimes in nursing homes. When nursing home abuse and neglect takes place, residents can suffer - and one of the first signs that residents are getting inadequate care is the appearance of bedsores.
What Causes Bedsores?
Can I Sue a Fraternity if My Child Was Injured or Killed in a University Hazing Accident?
Parents who live in Winnebago County, Illinois, send their children all over the state and country to attend college. As university attendance levels continue to rise and more young adults seek to obtain a higher education, exposure to certain behaviors and risks also increases. One well-known risk of university attendance is the binge drinking that often occurs at campus parties.
Unfortunately, binge drinking is often a mandatory part of joining a fraternity or sorority, and young adults with little experience can suffer serious injuries and even death in campus hazing incidents or university house parties. If your child was attending college and was injured, assaulted, or killed after being provided alcohol by another adult, you may be able to take legal action.
Common Injuries From College Binge Drinking
Research suggests that college students drink substantially more than their peers who do not attend college. Binge drinking, or drinking to the point of getting drunk, is especially common at universities with fraternities, sororities, and prominent sporting programs. Binge drinking places young students, who are often without parental supervision for the first time in their lives, at significant risk of catastrophic injury, including:
My Loved One Suffered a Broken Bone or Fracture in their Illinois Nursing Home. What Can I Do if I Suspect Abuse?
After a family has made the difficult, often heartbreaking decision to move a loved one into an Illinois nursing home, the family members of the nursing home resident may continue to face additional stress because they worry their loved one is not being properly cared for. Stories of nursing home neglect and abuse are widespread, and, unfortunately, incidents are common. Although accidents and injuries tend to happen more often to elderly people, if your loved one has suffered a broken bone or fracture in their nursing home, you may rightfully wonder if it was an accident or whether something like neglect or even physical abuse is going on.
What Causes Broken Bones and Fractures in Nursing Home Residents?
In addition to the clear dangers of physical abuse, more mundane behavior on the part of nursing home staff and supervisors may be responsible for residents’ injuries. Nursing home residents often suffer from weakness, frailty, and difficulty with independent movement. This places them at increased risk of falling and getting injured, especially if nursing home staff are not properly monitoring residents and offering support when necessary. Even minor accidents can result in serious injuries, and not every injury is a consequence of nursing home neglect. However, many behaviors can contribute to an increased rate of resident injuries, including:
I Did Not Know About a Drug’s Serious Side Effects. Can I Sue The Drug Company?
Drug companies in the United States often have significant incentives to market drugs without making potential users aware of the complete list of possible side effects. Because new drugs can be lucrative and often promise significant results, drug manufacturers may not do the necessary research to discover dangerous side effects or may attempt to hide them. Even drugs approved by the Federal Drug Administration frequently have serious side effects that are not discovered until after they are widely available. Other times, patients are victimized by drugs that are wrongly prescribed or administered. If you have suffered an injury because of a defective drug, consider speaking with an experienced Illinois drug injuries attorney.
Defective Drugs Can Cause Serious, Long-Lasting Injuries
When patients take drugs, they expect them to help manage injuries, pain, or other suffering. Unfortunately, however, sometimes defective drugs can worsen symptoms or present new ones. While side effects can vary widely, common serious side effects of defective drugs include:
An Illinois Emergency Room Failed to Diagnose or Treat Me Properly. What Are My Options?
Those who seek the aid of emergency room staff are in need of urgent, competent treatment from doctors and nurses who take the utmost care to ensure a patient gets treated and diagnosed according to the standard of care.
Unfortunately, medical practitioners do not always meet their duty in this regard, and patients often suffer tremendously when an illness is misdiagnosed or poorly treated because of an emergency room mistake. Because emergency rooms are often hectic places with stressed, overworked staff who do not have ongoing relationships with patients, failure to diagnose and improper treatment may be more common than in traditional doctors’ offices. In some cases, this may rise to the level of medical malpractice.
Common Emergency Room Errors
Medical mistakes have been pinpointed as the third leading cause of death in the United States, and research suggests that errors in emergency rooms are particularly common and occur in nearly every aspect of emergency care. Because staff are often switching between patients and changing shifts, small mistakes can quickly be exacerbated by poor communication or incorrect information. Other common mistakes include:
Do I Have Legal Options if I was Seriously Injured By a Chemical Spill?
Chemicals are everywhere in our environment. Even things that we use every day, like vinegar and baking soda, are chemicals or chemical compounds. Most of the chemicals in our environment pose no risk to us, even with daily exposure. Sometimes, however, we are exposed to dangerous chemicals without even knowing it.
Certain workplaces are known to carry the risk of exposure to toxic chemicals, but even places like your home, streets, and grocery stores may have strong chemicals present that are not always managed correctly. We may unintentionally ingest them, get them on our skin or eyes, or breathe them in. While certain chemical exposures are unavoidable, other times a chemical can get into inappropriate areas due to negligence, serious accidents, or poor management. If you have been injured by exposure to chemicals in the Winnebago County area, a skilled personal injury attorney may be able to help.
Is Illinois Daycare Understaffing Responsible for a Severe Allergic Reaction in My Child?
Children in Illinois daycares frequently have severe food allergies. Daycare staff must be made aware of these allergies and adequately train staff to recognize and respond to signs of an allergic reaction. Because allergic reactions can be life-threateningly severe, daycare staff and managers need to track, plan, and carefully prepare meals to avoid giving children foods to which they are allergic. But when a daycare is careless or understaffed, the risk of accidentally exposing a child to a dangerous allergen increases. If your child was given food to which they are allergic at their daycare, the daycare may be liable for any food allergy injury that resulted.
Inadequate Staffing Increases Risk of Allergen Exposure
A new 2021 law requires daycare and school employees to recognize and treat signs of anaphylactic shock. Ideally, a child in daycare will never be exposed to anything to which she is allergic, but this law is intended to save lives if a child is accidentally given unsafe food.
Can I Sue if My Spouse Was Injured or Killed By a Defective Airbag in Illinois?
Vehicle airbags are often subject to conditions that have the potential to deteriorate the condition of the airbags long before they are ever deployed in a car accident. Extreme temperature fluctuations, humidity, and other environmental conditions have the potential to degrade airbags and make them defective, less effective, or even dangerous.
The National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a major recall several years ago that involved tens of millions of vehicles that had airbags that could potentially explode and cause serious injury or death. While lives were undoubtedly saved by the recall, other lives in Illinois continue to be prematurely shortened or diminished in quality when a defective airbag deploys improperly.
How Should an Effective Airbag Work?
Help! I Slipped and Got Cut on Broken Glass at a Rockford Grocery Store. Can I Sue?
Hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois go grocery shopping every day without incident. But sometimes, what should have been a fast and easy trip to buy milk can turn into a nightmare scenario. Grocery stores that are not properly maintained and kept clean can quickly present a variety of hazards to unsuspecting customers, including slippery floors, loose electric wires, broken glass, and heavy falling objects.
The consequences of these conditions can leave customers with serious and long-lasting injuries that require extensive and ongoing medical care. If you have been injured in a Winnebago County retail store and want to know whether you may be able to pursue compensation under Illinois’ premises liability laws, read on.
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