Pharmaceutical makers Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie have renewed their push to pull the plug on efforts by trial lawyers to force the companies to pay for allegedly contributing to alleged toxic emissions of ethylene oxide plaintiffs claim have caused illness among people living in Lake County, saying their use of the chemicals were not only essential to health care, but…
Hospital closures in rural areas disrupt access to care for injured workers but do not significantly increase workers compensation claim costs or disability duration, according to a Workers Compensation Research Institute study released Thursday. The study examined the impact of hospital closures on access to care and claim outcomes and found that rural hospital closures led to workers traveling an…
While workplace injury rates are declining, those that do happen are becoming more severe, more expensive and are keeping employees off the job longer, with new hires and older workers posing the greatest risks, according to an “injury impact” report released Monday by Travelers. The annual report, based on more than 1.2 million workers compensation claims filed between 2021 and…
Illinois state courts remained America’s top destination for asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits in 2025, with Madison County and St. Clair County again accounting for the lion’s share of such filings, a new report has indicated. However, while asbestos-related lawsuits increased nationally, driven largely by increases in lawsuits filed over alleged asbestos exposure in talc products, the total lawsuit numbers dipped…
A Granite City family has filed suit against railroad operator Norfolk Southern, saying the company should pay for an accident at its Granite City rail yard in which one of the girls became pinned under a train car and lost her legs, leaving her sister and a friend who witnessed the incident also forever traumatized. On April 2, attorneys for…
The families of four young children and an 18-year-old camp counselor who died at an after-school program in Chatham when a car crashed through the walls of the building housing the YNOT After School Camp in April 2025 have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the YNOT camp operators. The lawsuit was filed on April 19 in Sangamon County Circuit…
A fatal crash involving a Subway worker who was speeding and had marijuana in her system must be reconsidered because the wrong legal standard was applied in awarding workers compensation benefits, an Illinois appellate court ruled Monday. In Subway v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, the Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth District reversed a lower court ruling and set aside a…
When a workplace injury results in paralysis or other life-altering conditions, the related workers compensation claim often extends far beyond medical care and indemnity, increasingly encompassing the cost and complexity of modifying, or even rebuilding, the injured worker’s home. What was once a relatively rare component of catastrophic claims is becoming more common as advances in medicine result in more…
Baby formula maker Abbott Labs has been ordered to pay at least $70 million, after a jury found the company should pay for allegedly not doing enough to prevent four infants from ingesting infant formula that caused them to become severely ill. The verdict came despite the formula manufacturer’s assertions that evidence showed that in at least three of the…
Yerano Martinez was seriously injured in a car accident after he drove through a stop sign at an intersection. Martinez alleged that an overgrown bush, located on property owned by Jeffrey Smith, obscured the stop sign. The bush extended from Smith’s property into the county’s right-of-way, which is a strip of land adjacent to the roadway. Martinez argued that Smith…
