Posted on February 22, 2016 in Car Accidents

If you survived a crash with no broken bones, you might have good reason to consider yourself lucky. However, other injuries may be less visible, but potentially just as intrusive. Specifically, about one in five cases of traumatic brain injuries are caused by a motor vehicle accident. Another 28 percent of TBI injuries are caused by a slip and fall incident.

Although a diagnosis of mild TBI may not seem to implicate long-term consequences, a recent study found otherwise. Specifically, up to 70 percent of TBI patients may suffer from sleep disturbances. Other symptoms may include cognitive or motor impairments, as well as emotional problems. Taken together, these impairments may be quite disruptive, interfering with an individual's ability to work and diminishing his or her quality of life.

Unfortunately, many crash victims might lack the foresight to adequately request damages from a negligent motorist. The offending driver's insurance company may attempt to quickly resolve an incident of unsafe driving by making a settlement offer. Although a quick resolution may seem attractive, especially as medical bills, lost wages and other costs begin to mount, a personal injury law firm that focuses on motor vehicle accidents may recommend a longer-term perspective. 

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 Posted on February 19, 2016 in Firm News

About a month ago, we wrote a post about trucks and the trucking industry, and how the National Transportation Safety Board wants fewer accidents involving tired truck drivers. That's just one of many areas involved in the trucking industry where improvements could cut down on potential accidents. Another factor that the trucking industry could try to address is the size of the trucks -- but that would hinder they're ability to transport cargo across the country.

Trucks are very big, which means they are hard to see around. So Samsung has taken some creative steps to try to help other drivers out on the road when they are behind a truck. The "safety truck" they have conceived isn't anything too extreme. It's just a regular truck -- but with a panel of TV mounted to the pack streaming footage from a front-mounted video camera.

In other words, the bank of TVs allow you to see through the truck. A simple, effective change that could save lives and reduce truck accidents. How about that?

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 Posted on February 10, 2016 in Articles

From Chicagotribune.Com, a Flipboard magazine by Chicago Tribune

Some Chicago area consumers were surprised to learn this month that insurance companies can at any time limit their access to…

Read it on Flipboard

Read it on chicagotribune.com

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 Posted on February 04, 2016 in Firm News

If you have suffered injury in an accident due to someone else's negligence, you have a right to seek due compensation for the pain, suffering and financial losses you suffer. The key word in that first sentence may well be "due." In the legal context it usually means what is suitable, appropriate or correct for the circumstances of a given case.

As you might imagine, the implication of that definition is that a person in central Illinois who decides to seek due compensation would be ill advised to expect an outcome that simply opens a spigot to endless payments from the defendant.

Very often, the plaintiff in a personal injury case will have to show that he or she has done everything reasonable to try to minimize the possible losses after the accident. Such steps might include exercising reasonable judgment in selecting what doctor to see or what treatment to undergo; with "reasonable" being subject to the interpretation of a judge or jury.

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 Posted on January 29, 2016 in Firm News

A good segment of the population -- especially that which includes those born prior to 1960 -- probably doesn't have much of a clue about the practice of yoga. Yoga is not the cartoon bear. No, it is a set of practices that can trace its lineage back many millennia. It involves exercising focused control over mind, body and breath.

Today, those who diligently practice yoga swear to the benefits it delivers. But, much like chiropractic medicine and forms of alternative treatment with ancient eastern roots, yoga is not something medical practitioners in the U.S. buy into. Is it possible though that things are changing?

We think it is safe to say that the traditional view of medical practice in central Illinois and the rest of the U.S. is framed by a concept of condition management. You have a pain. You go to the doctor. You likely will be prescribed some medication to ease the pain. You might be prescribed some physical therapy. If you have insurance, whether it is workers' compensation or personal health insurance, at least some portion of the treatment might be covered.

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 Posted on January 26, 2016 in Articles

Kanoski Bresney named 2015 Litigator Award Winner™. Having been conferred this prestigious National Award, the firm ranks among the Top 1% of all lawyers for: Automobile Accidents, Products Liability, Failure To Diagnose and Truck Accidents Litigation.

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON: JAN. 14, 2016 Kanoski Bresney, a trial law firm located in Bloomington, Illinois, was today awarded the prestigious 2015 Litigator Award™ for extraordinary achievement within the field(s) of: Automobile Accidents, Products Liability, Failure To Diagnose and Truck Accidents Litigation.

Justly standing as the nation’s most coveted symbol of "Litigation Achievement", this unrivaled annual honor recognizes trial lawyers [firms] who have attained extraordinary litigation achievement within one or more of 72 pre-defined "Practice Specialty" categories. Based strictly on "Verdict and/or Settlement" dollar achievement rather than peer popularity, the Litigator Awards™ are perhaps the most rigorous and openly judged trial law rating. Simply being nominated is to be set among the elite of the profession. Those awarded are generally considered among the finest trial lawyers in the nation.

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 Posted on January 22, 2016 in Firm News

We live in a 24/7 world. At least some of us do. Truck drivers could be considered among those who don't always follow the typical 9-to-5 routine that most of the rest of us do in Illinois. And as we noted in a post last November, the demands of the 24-hour long-haul industry have a way of leading some drivers to push the envelope on hours of service a little too far.

Clearly, this is not a new issue, and it's back in the spotlight again courtesy of the National Transportation Safety Board. The board recently issued its annual "Most Wanted List" of safety issues it would like to see addressed in 2016. Coming in at top of the changes the NTSB says it would like to see is reducing the number of crashes involving tired truckers.

Driver fatigue is not something that is unique to truckers by any means. But as we have noted, truckers sometimes face time pressures that push their window of operation well beyond a normal eight-hour day. And when an accident involving a big-rig truck occurs, the outcomes for the victims of other vehicles are very often catastrophic.

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 Posted on January 15, 2016 in Firm News

Regular readers of this blog will note that we have been keeping an eye on what is going on with workers' compensation reform in the state of Illinois. The issue has become something of a political football as the Republican governor and the Democratic controlled legislature try to protect their end zones and score points for their respective sides.

How things will play out is unknown, but in the view of at least one pundit, some changes are bound to occur, if for no other reason than because it may be the only way to reach a compromise on the state budget. His prediction is that there might be some minor changes, such as restricting benefit payments only to claims that are clearly work related.

In the meantime, however, the current system is the one we have to work under, and as anyone with experience in this area of the law knows, navigating that system can be a challenge -- even though claims are supposed to be handled on a no-fault basis.

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 Posted on January 11, 2016 in Articles

A study into diagnostic errors says they are very common, but frighteningly little understood.

Over the past 16 years the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has released a series of groundbreaking studies into shortcomings in the health care industry. Their first study, "To Err is Human," brought much needed attention to the problem of preventable medical errors. IOM's latest report, "Improving Diagnosis in Health Care," is now shining light on diagnostic errors and the harm they do to patients. However, as U.S. News & World Report notes, perhaps the most frightening conclusion reached by the study is just how little is still known about diagnostic errors.

Lack of studies

The report notes that coming up with a precise figure about how many people are actually misdiagnosed at health care facilities is impossible because the problem is underreported and little studied. As one of the researchers notes, the lack of information surrounding misdiagnoses is distressing because nobody knows "how often it occurs, how serious it is or how much it costs." The report refers to diagnostic errors as a massive "blind-spot" in patient safety.

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 Posted on January 07, 2016 in Firm News

Social media platforms are nothing new. They've been around for more than a few years, and new ones seem to pop up every year. The evolution of the channels is not well understood, however, and this could be proving to be something of a problem for the nursing home industry across the country and in Illinois.

The issue, as recently reported by the public interest journalism outlet ProPublica, is the number of disturbing instances in which nursing home workers post photos or videos of residents in their care.

Industry and regulatory officials accept that such practices violate rules of common decency, privacy and dignity. They may also violate federal health privacy laws. But the report observes that most of the cases that have been uncovered have not led to criminal charges.

This raises questions about whether such elder abuse and neglect doesn't warrant pursuing civil action. Those who may suspect that their loved ones have been victims of such activity should be consulting with an attorney to explore what rights they have and what action might be possible.

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