Illinois Injury Attorney Blog

A two Car Crash on Illinois Route 159 left one woman dead. The auto accident happened Tuesday afternoon. The Illinois Car Accident Lawyers learned the victim was identified as 60 year old Karen Mavers from Waterloo. Illinois investigators say 77 year old Jeanette Phillips was driving the second vehicle. She was not hurt in the car accident.

Illinois State Police investigated this Car Collision. Officers say Mavers's car was hit by Phillip's approaching vehicle that had merged into Mavers's lane. The collision forced Mavers to lose control of her vehicle. Thus, her car wound up off the road, went down an embankment and flipped. Phillips was ticketed for using a lane improperly in causing an accident.

Not surprisingly, passenger cars are the most frequent type of vehicle involved in deadly Auto Accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found in Illinois in 2009, passenger cars were involved in 593 deadly crashes. That accounted for 45.6% of all the deadly vehicle crashes in Illinois that year. Light trucks made up the second most fatal accidents. They were in 32.9% of them.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also looked at the ages of people involved in deadly vehicle collisions. In this week's deadly car crash on Illinois Route 159, the drivers were 60 and 77 years old. Data showed in 2009 in Illinois, people older than 74 were in 132 fatal crashes. People aged 55-64 were in 120 deadly auto accidents. Nationally, people older than 74 were in 3,706 fatal crashes while people aged 55-64 were in 4,211 deadly vehicle accidents. The age group with the most fatalities in 2009 was the 25-34 year old one. That age group had the most vehicle fatalities nationally and in Illinois.

Illinois Auto Accident Lawyers recommend if possible, people take specific actions if they find themselves in a car crash. Victims should collect and keep evidence in case certain entities ask for it in the future. Insurance companies and attorneys might ask for such evidence at a later date. Helpful evidence can be a variety of items like police reports, accident photos, witness statements, driving records and medical records.

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Learning if your Illinois doctor has a history of Medical Malpractice will soon be much easier. Such information will soon be available online as part of the state's new "Patient Right to Know Act" which Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed Tuesday. Experienced Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyers are familiar with this online Medical Malpractice information source because it's not new. The law reinstates the website that had been in place for a few years until the Illinois Supreme Court ruled last year that a Medical Malpractice reform law was not constitutional. Thus, the state had to take down the website.

So what will the database entail? People should be able to find a more detailed history on Illinois physicians such as any judgments and settlements against the doctors in Medical Malpractice and Medical Negligence lawsuits in the past five years. Appeals will also be noted. People can also learn if a doctor was disciplined in Illinois or in another state. Doctors will have about two months to look over the information before the website is active for consumers. Then, information on almost 50,000 licensed doctors will be back on the web, and it will be updated continuously.

If you are interested in using the database, you can find it on the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's website. Illinois is not the only state to offer such medical information to people. California, Idaho and Florida are just a few of the other states with similar searchable databases.

Illinois lawmakers and the state's court system are constantly changing and reforming Illinois's Medical Malpractice rules and laws. Thus, the honest and hard-working Illinois Medical Malpractice Lawyers at Crossen Kooi are staying on top of these changes to better serve their clients. This is also why it's important to carefully choose a Medical Malpractice Lawyer if you believe you are the victim of a medical error.

One such change was mentioned earlier, and it was a big one. In February of last year, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the state’s Medical Malpractice law which had been in place for five years. The law was overturned because it limited compensation to injured patients for pain and suffering. Thus, what's commonly known as "caps" on jury awards in Medical Malpractice and Medical Negligence cases were done away with. The caps had been set at $500,000 for non-economic damages in decisions against physicians and $1 million in verdicts against hospitals. Now, juries are not restricted on how much they can award a victim of a medical error.

Another key element of Illinois's Medical Malpractice Act is the statute of limitations. This aspect mandates that an apparent victim of a medical mistake must start Medical Malpractice actions within 2 years of when the supposed error happened. However, there are circumstances that can allow a victim a longer period of time to file a Medical Malpractice lawsuit.

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