Chicago Accident Law Blog

November 19, 2006

Illinois Chief Justice’s Libel Case Leads to $7 Million Jury Award

A libel action in suburban Chicago led to a $7 million award for Illinois Chief Justice Robert R. Thomas. A Kane County jury returned the verdict against the Kane County Chronicle and a former columnist on November 14, 2006. Justice Thomas, a former Chicago Bear and Notre Dame kicker, alleged that the columnist and the Chronicle defamed him by printing that he traded his vote in an attorney disciplinary case in exchange for a political favor to enable a candidate he favored to be elevated to the bench. Attorneys representing the defendants indicated that they will likely appeal, and that one of the issues they will raise will be that the jury should have been told that the columnist was a opinion columnist not a news reporter. The trial judge, Cook County Circuit Judge Donald J. O’Brien Jr., ruled

that there is no separate First Amendment privilege for statements of opinion and that a false assertion of fact can be libelous even though couched in terms of an opinion.

The basis of the ruling was a U.S. Supreme Court decision Milkovich v. Loraine Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990).
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November 19, 2006

Chicago Internet Prescription Malpractice

by Edmund Scanlan

An Illinois internet prescription malpractice suit named two physicians, one from New Jersey and one from Pennsylvania for prescribing Xanax and Ultram to an Illinois resident based solely on an online questionnaire. In May 2004 a 31 year old Illinois man received 60 2mg tablets of Xanax and 90 50mg tablets of Ultram based upon the internet application. The prescriptions were filled by internet pharmacies located in Florida. The plaintiff testified that he recalls taking one tablet of the Xanax and one tablet of the Ultram, and the next thing that he recalls is waking up in a hospital three weeks later.
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November 9, 2006

Illinois Medical Malpractice-Spinal Cord Injection

by Edmund Scanlan

An Illinois medical malpractice case I recently handled where an anesthetic was injected into the victim’s spinal cord ended successfully for a Chicago area woman. A 44 year old Chicago area woman became a victim of medical malpractice when she went into a surgical center for repair of a torn rotator cuff. Prior to the surgery the anesthesiologist injected the patient with an anesthetic to reduce post operative pain. The anesthetic was injected into the patient’s spinal cord, instead of proximate to the brachial plexus nerve. As a result of the anesthetic entering the patient’s spinal cord, the patient suffered partial paralysis of her arms and legs as well as numbness over large areas of her trunk.
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