A state appeals panel has ruled Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson must continue defending themselves against a rash of lawsuits seeking payouts for marketing and selling baby formula allegedly linked to cases of a condition potentially fatal in infants. Thousands of lawsuits have landed in court over cases of the condition known as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), which results in the…
A state appeals panel voided a $3.5 million verdict awarded to a man who claimed he was hurt while working for Union Pacific because the court determined a Cook County judge wrongly blocked the railroad from telling jurors about the man’s prior conviction for a crime related to dishonesty. Jeffrey Kozik Jr. sued UP in August 2019 over an incident…
Nearly two dozen lawsuits lodged by trial lawyers on behalf of out-of-state plaintiffs seeking to use Cook County’s famously plaintiff-friendly courts to score potentially big judgments against baby formula makers don’t belong in Illinois state court, a state appeals court has ruled. On Dec. 12, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court granted a win to pharmaceutical…
A group of big medical device and chemical manufacturing companies are pushing back against attempts by trial lawyers to rope them into another big potential payout in the continuing legal actions over claims ethylene oxide emissions from factories and medical device sterilization plants in Lake County caused cancer. In motions and briefs filed in November and early December, the companies…
Illinois’ state government, as well as Chicago and nine North Shore suburbs, could be in line for as much as $280 million under a deal struck with agrichemical giant Monsanto, through its parent company Bayer, to end governmental lawsuits accusing the company of allegedly contaminating water with so-called PCBs. The settlement was announced Dec. 2 by both Illinois Attorney General…
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced a $120 million settlement with Monsanto Company (Monsanto) and affiliates Solutia Inc. and Pharmacia LLC over the environmental and health effects of Monsanto’s decades-long production of polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs. Raoul’s office filed a 2022 lawsuit alleging the company was aware of the chemicals’ toxicity while publicly denying any knowledge of the danger…
The daughter of a former Indiana Department of Correction inmate failed to prove a doctor’s liability in the inmate’s death from Hepatitis C complications, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in affirming a district court’s summary judgment order. The circuit court ruled that the appellant, Skyler Tackett, presented insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find appellee Dr….
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision that Evansville police officers did not use excessive force on a man who died following a violent 2019 struggle, in a case which sparked nationwide publicity and an investigation by the Associated Press and Frontline. The plaintiffs, the family and estate of Edward Snukis, sued the City of Evansville…
An Indianapolis woman is suing the maker of the Fitbit smart watch, alleging a defect in her watch’s battery caused it to overheat and gave her thermal burns. According to the complaint, filed July 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Nicole Hutchison’s Fitbit Versa 2 watch caused a “substantial burn” to her wrist. The…
Pipemaker J-M Manufacturing has filed its latest attempt to show fraud on the part of asbestos lawyers they claim coach witnesses to say they worked with its products decades ago. The alleged scheme now involves Sokolove Law, whose lead-generation capabilities give Simmons Hanly Conroy extra firepower to overwhelm defendants with lawsuits. J-MM had already sued the Simmons firm for racketeering,…
