Chicago Accident Lawyer Blog

July 5, 2012

Teenager Sentenced to Time In Jail For Texting-While-Driving Death

CNN reports that in a landmark case, Massachusetts teenager, Aaron Deveau, 18, was convicted of vehicular homicide as a result of texting and driving and was sentenced to one year in prison. The prosecutor told jurors that Deveau, then 17, was texting when his car smashed head on into the car of Donald Bowley, killing the father of three and seriously injuring his passenger. Cell phone records introduced into evidence showed that Deveau sent and received 193 texts on the day of the fatal crash. The prosecutor argued that the records show that Deveau must have been texting at the time of the crash since he sent a text shortly before impact. The Defendant maintained that he was not texting but was tired and was thinking about homework and that caused him to become distracted and cross the center line. The jury found him guilty of vehicular homicide, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and texting while driving.

The serious dangers of texting and driving were pointed out in a study conducted by University of Utah professor, David Strayer. His research demonstrated that texting while driving was by far the most dangerous distraction that drivers regularly engage in. He found that texting while driving was twice as dangerous as driving while drunk.

Currently, Illinois law prohibits drivers from texting and driving. Illinois Vehicle Code at 625 ILCS 5/12-610.2 states a driver cannot text, instant message, email, or surf the web while driving. However, this is only a petty offense in Illinois and has a penalty of fine only. The maximum fine is $1,000.00.

July 4, 2012

Falling From an Abandoned Building Causes the Death of a Teenager on Chicago’s North Side

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

A 16-year-old teen that apparently entered the long-vacant Ravenswood Hospital building through a window this Monday morning, and fell from the second floor onto the concrete ground floor.

The teenager, later identified as Jose Morales, of the Northwest Side, was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center with severe internal injuries and died at 1 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

A neighbor near to the derelict building, Rachel Spooner, said she had seen an increasing groups of teenagers sneak into the building to hang out several times over the last six months, and she said she had made a call to the city in December and subsequently the owners of the building were cited due to code violation, but the situation still continued.

July 4, 2012

Transportation Bill Cuts Funding For Biking and Walking

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

Even though biking and walking reduces congestion on the roadways and reduces the level of green house gasses admitted into the atmosphere, Congress is proposing a bill that would greatly reduce funding for local biking and walking projects. According to the Active Transportation Alliance, the proposed federal bill would reduce spending for these projects from between 40 and 100 percent. Federal money for walking or biking would be reduced by 40 percent, but the cash strapped states would be allowed to divert this money to other transportation projects, most likely roads, meaning that in some states the reduction could be as much as100 percent.

Active Transportation Alliance notes that biking and walking nationally account for 12 percent of all trips but receives only 1.5 percent of federal spending. Ron Burke, executive director of Active Transportation Alliance states: “We are concerned that people who chose to walk and bike will get the short end of the stick as a result of disproportionate cuts in the proposed bill. With gas prices and roadway congestion increasing, and more and more people wanting communities that are friendly to walking and biking, this bill is a step in the wrong direction.”

June 8, 2012

Bill Will Ban Use of Cell Phones Near Accident Scenes

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

The bill’s goal is to reduce the risk of injuries to people already involved in an accident and emergency personnel that are attending to the crash. There have been several cases where emergency personnel have been injured by careless drivers too engulfed in a phone conversation to notice an accident scene ahead of them. With this initiative the flashing lights of any kind of parked emergency vehicle will mean Illinois drivers must hang up their phones.

Whenever a careless driver causes an accident the victim should not have to pay for the damage suffered. If the driver is using a company telephone and is carrying out a business-related conversation, the driver’s employer may be vicariously liable for the driver’s negligence. It is important to know your legal rights. If you have been involved in an auto accident contact Chicago personal injury attorneys Zneimer & Zneimer P.C for a free personal injury consultation.

The legislation would make it illegal for drivers to make calls with a hand-held phone within 500 feet of an accident scene where emergency vehicles have flashing lights, except for reporting emergencies. It also bans sending picture and video messages while driving at any time. The last thing could be logical because sending messages implies drivers looking at the cell phone instead looking at the road.

May 30, 2012

Dangerous dogs attack woman and police officer in the Southwest Side of Chicago

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

Two grey pit-bull terriers attacked a woman while she was returning home from the Laundromat in the Little Village neighborhood at about 3:40 pm. The dogs also attacked an Ogden District police officer that was responding to the emergency. The police officer shot one of the dogs.

The woman and the Chicago police officer were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where both were treated for multiple bites. According to police sources, as the woman was trying to enter the back of her home, one of the two dogs bit her on her right hand several times and then lunged for her neck. When she lifted her wounded arm to protect her neck, the dog bit her in the underarm area.

A neighbor whose attention was caught by the woman´s screaming, threw a piece of meat at the dogs trying to distract them as the injured woman was lying on the ground, police said.

May 22, 2012

Worker dies in explosion, ten others injured

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

Arens Controls Company, L.L.C. boasts as a world leader in engineering and manufacturing precision operator interface control systems, and systems for commercial vehicles. Based on preliminary information, it appears that in its quest for technical leadership, the company neglected the safety of its own workers. Today one person died and ten others were injured when a chemical exploded in one of their warehouses. Seven workers and three police officers were taken to the hospital. According to hospital personnel, the victims were exposed to potassium hydroxide, a skin and respiratory irritant.

Tragedies like these are preventable if the company had followed proper safety precautions. Investigators from the Illinois State Fire Marshall’s office and OSHA have been called in and the results of the investigation may take many weeks.

Chicago personal injury attorneys Zneimer & Zneimer p.c. have represented victims of industrial accidents where often the cause is the company’s failure to follow industry safety guidelines. If you or a loved one has been inured in an accident, contact Chicago personal injury attorneys for a free personal injury consultation.

May 14, 2012

Defendant Did Not Give Aid Negligently Where He Failed to Give Any Aid

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

The plaintiff, Tina Miller, mother and special administrator of Kyle Christian sued several people for negligently aiding her son Kyle who died after a heroin overdose. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant voluntarily undertook the duty to help Kyle, but did so negligently, and as a result, Kyle Christian died.

Facts

Christian, and a couple of associates, Moors and Hecox, started using heroin in the spring of 2006. To finance their heroin habit, Christian, Moors, and Hecox were stealing copper out of new construction homes and from stores. On the day Kyle Christian died, the group went to Kyle’s garage where he had some copper and sold the copper to a scrap yard. With the money the group bought six bags of heroin and Kyle ingested two bags of heroin. At some point Moors and Hecox noticed that Kyle was pale, and that his breathing was abnormal. Hecox began giving Kyle CPR. The group then drove to the house of another associate, Brian Hoshaw, to ask Hoshaw to check on Kyle as Hoshaw had seen Kyle overdose before and had experience with overdosing. The tree soon left Hoshaw’s house and went to a restaurant, called Spring Garden.

May 12, 2012

Chicago To Focus On Pedestrian Safety

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

Chicago Department of Transportation proposed plans to increase pedestrian safety according to a Chicago Sun-Times article. Among the proposed changes include a reduction of the residential speed limit to 20 mph and walk signals could be 3 seconds longer. The stated goal of the Chicago Department of Transportation is to eliminate all pedestrian, bicycle and overall traffic crash fatalities within 10 years. Chicago also plans to install 300 countdown pedestrian signals at intersections this year and 100 more in 2013 in a further effort to increase pedestrian safety. The City also plans to increase the time given to pedestrians to cross by 3 seconds at 100 intersections.

These changes would be important given that 80 percent of vehicle-pedestrian accidents occur at or near intersections and commonly involve people crossing with the walk signal. The personal injury law firm of Zneimer & Zneimer are currently handling many cases for pedestrians injured by drivers who failed to yield to the pedestrian in the crosswalk as the law required. However, the most common cause of injuries seem to be caused by drivers making right turns on red lights and not looking for pedestrians. The Chicago law firm of Zneimer & Zneimer has recently settled a case in which the motorist who was making a right turn on red was looking left the whole time to see if cars were coming and never looked right until after she struck our client who was in the crosswalk and was crossing with the walk signal when he was hit. An easy and cheap way to make intersections safer for pedestrians would be to prohibit all right on red turns by motorists in Chicago.

May 6, 2012

Interpreters in ER Reduce Medical Errors

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

According to a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, having professional translators on staff may limit miscommunications between patients and medical staff in the ER. The study found that mistakes with “clinical consequences” were twice as likely to occur if the hospital ER no interpreters or amateur interpreters to translate for the non-English speaking patient.

The study, which was conducted with primarily Spanish speaking families, found that 12 percent of translation errors could have been a potential risk to a child but when the translator was a family member or a non-professional translator the potentially risky errors went up to 22 percent. Interpreters with at least 100 hours of training were found to have the lowest error rate with only two percent of errors being potentially harmful to a child.

In one example of an error, the amateur translator told the ER medical staff that the child patient was not on any medications and was not allergic to any medications when in fact he never ever asked the mother of the child whether this was true.

May 1, 2012

Chicago Police investigates cop’s dog attack case

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSyQtApFlP8

A little dog became a victim of a dog attack. Witnesses say they saw a pitbull that belonged to an off-duty police officer, attack a two-and-a-half year old Pomeranian Papillon mix, when the little dog was playing with a ball at Montrose beach. The little dog’s name was Willy and he died three days after the attack.

Audrey Fisher, who was Willy’s owner, said in an interview that the officer refused to give any kind of information to her once the attack occurred. “I wanted him to stop and talk to us… and he just wouldn’t,” Fisher said. Also, the owner tells to WGN-TV that she owes near to $6,000 in veterinary bills.