On September 28th, 2012 Cook County Associate Judge Thomas Donnelly threw out the arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators who had been charged with violation of the City of Chicago’s overnight park curfew. He went on to declare that the curfew violates the First Amendment. He reasoned that the selective enforcement of the curfew, as well […]

Starting July 1st 2012 Illinois jurors will be allowed to submit written questions for witnesses on the stand in civil trials. More than half the states, and all federal circuit courts, allow this practice; this rule, recently approved by the Illinois Supreme Court, offers another opportunity for jurors to actively participate in the trial. One […]

Divorce is never easy but Illinois is one of more than 20 states that allow no-fault divorces as well as fault dissolution’s on the grounds of impotency, adultery, bigamy, desertion, cruelty or a felony conviction. Couples often seek a no-fault divorce but find that they have issues when it comes to the division of property. […]

Currently in Illinois, repeat speed offenders are oftentimes sentenced to court supervision and fines instead of license suspensions. According to this Chicago-Tribune article, sometimes the supervisory sentence is handed down improperly and the motivation for these types of alternate sentences is to allow the chronic speeder to avoid a license suspension. However, as reported in […]

if you’re injured as a result of an automobile accident with an emergency services vehicle that is responding to a call, are you be able to receive compensation for your injuries? Well, the answer is–it depends. In Illinois, in many cases, responding emergency vehicles maybe held to be immune from liability, but ultimately, the facts […]

When someone slips and falls in a public place in Illinois such as a mall, in order to prevail in a personal injury lawsuit, the person who fell must establish that the owner of the property was somehow responsible for the fall. Sometimes this can be a difficult proposition, as the plaintiff in Ishoo v. […]

Sometimes, car accidents occur when a police officer is responding to a call and in many cases, depending on the facts of the case, laws exist which provide immunity–for police officers and their employers–from liability in personal injury lawsuits. In determining whether immunity applies, the courts must first decide if officer was “was engaged in […]

An important Illinois workers’ compensation decision was handed down by the Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District, at the end of 2011. At issue in Will County Forest Preserve District v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, No. 3–11–0077WC, was whether a claimant’s shoulder injury qualified as a scheduled loss to the arm or a person-as-a-whole award. […]

Up until very recently, Illinois was 1 of 14 states refusing to allow the use of cameras in courtroom for the purpose of recording court proceedings. But its hold out status changed last week after an announcement from the Illinois Supreme Court. The Court explained that it would test the waters and permit the use […]

In Caburnay v. Norwegian American Hospital, No. 1-10-1740, the plaintiff was an anesthesiologist who tripped and fell in the lobby of the hospital where he worked. On the date of the accident, he was waiting for an elevator when he tripped over a floor mat that he alleged was folded. As he fell, he hit […]