Articles Posted in Blogs

Will County injury claims start with a complaint filed with the Circuit Clerk at the Joliet courthouse, usually electronically. Claims between $10,000 and $50,000 often go to mandatory arbitration, while larger cases proceed in court. Deadlines are strict, so know yours before you file. Many people picture one big courtroom moment. At Slip & Fall…

A University of Illinois student injury claim depends on who owns the place where you were hurt. Landlords and businesses generally allow two years to file suit. City sidewalks generally allow one year. Falls in university buildings go to the Illinois Court of Claims, with notice to the Attorney General. Student life moves fast. Leases…

Recent Illinois premises liability court rulings show that courts still lean on the open and obvious doctrine, but a September 2026 First District order shows it does not end every case. Three recent orders involving sidewalk falls show what can help or hurt your claim. One caution first. All three are unpublished orders under Supreme…

The biggest mistakes to avoid right after a fall are brushing off your injuries, leaving without a written report, skipping photos and witnesses, admitting fault, and discarding your shoes. Each one can hide an injury or weaken a claim. Adrenaline is a poor judge of damage. People stand on a swelling ankle and say they…

How juries decide slip-and-fall cases comes down to three questions. Did the property owner know, or should they have known, about the hazard? Did they act reasonably? Did that failure cause your injuries? Jurors then weigh your own care and set the damages. A juror in a Cook County courtroom does not think in legal…

Surveillance footage retention policy at stores varies by location, and many systems record over old video on a loop. Illinois does not impose a general duty on a store to keep footage of your fall. To preserve it, report the fall in writing, note the exact time and camera areas, and have a lawyer send…

Maybe you were looking at your phone for a second. You should have noticed the hazard before you hit it. Now you’re wondering if that one lapse wipes out your entire claim before it even starts. It doesn’t, not automatically. The comparative negligence percentage Illinois courts assign to you determines how much your settlement shrinks,…

A toddler grabs a dangling blind cord and loops it around like a necklace. Nothing happens, you catch it in time, and your heart rate takes a few minutes to come back down. That moment is the reason window blind cord safety is a documented, regulated issue, not an overreaction to an ordinary household object.…

Window washers work suspended well above the ground, often on rigging and equipment they didn’t install and don’t control. When something goes wrong, from a rigging failure to an anchor point that was never properly maintained, the resulting fall raises a different set of legal questions than a typical workplace injury. A window washer accident…

Every spring, as Chicago apartments open their windows for the first warm days of the year, the city’s Department of Buildings issues the same reminder: window falls involving young children happen every year, and most are preventable. Window fall prevention is partly a parenting issue and partly a building maintenance one, and knowing where the…