Chicago Personal Injury Attorneys

Some injuries are immediately obvious. When a person has suffered an apparent injury such a puncture wound, loss of a limb, or lies unconscious or bleeding, there can be no doubt that an injury has just occurred. But other injuries can be much more subtle. Sometimes, there may be no clear damage. A person might hit their head but feel like everything is fine. Another person might have a medical procedure and believe that everything went well and as planned. Yet now and then, appearances can be misleading. The person who suffered a head injury may slowly lose cognitive functions over time and eventually become incapacitated or unable to care for themself. -And although a surgery may have seemed from all accounts to have been successful, it may later turn out that the surgeon left a clamp inside the body or committed an error that wasn’t immediately discoverable.

There is always a time limit within which a person must file an injury or malpractice lawsuit beyond which all rights to sue will be forever lost. This time limit, called the “statute of limitations” differs widely from State to state. In Chicago and across Illinois, the typical statute of limitations for non-work related injuries is two years from the time that the injury occurred. But as discussed above in the section titled “discovery”, it’s not always obvious that an injury even happened. For that reason, sometimes the two years does not begin to run until the point in time at which the person “knew or should have known” that an injury occurred. This time limitation is not always two years though. It can be longer when the injury was to a child or a person in a coma. It can also be shorter when for instance an accident happened on the “L” in Chicago. A qualified injury lawyer should always be consulted to determine what limit applies to your case.

A plaintiff is a person (or the estate of a deceased person) who is suing another person, company or hospital (defendant) for damages (money) in order to be compensated for the negligence (fault) that allowed the injury or medical malpractice to occur. If you yourself were injured, then you can certainly be a plaintiff against another person and file a lawsuit in civil court seeking monetary damages. But others can sometimes sue a responsible party for damages as well, not just the person who suffered the injury. When a wrongful death has occurred, it may be possible for the parents, children, spouse and/or domestic partner to initiate a malpractice or injury lawsuit. In certain uncommon circumstances, it may even be possible for an unrelated person to sue for psychological injuries that they suffered from watching another person get injured or killed due to the negligence of another. An experienced attorney should be consulted to determine who can be a plaintiff, as each case is different.

Especially when a loved one has been injured or has died due to the negligence of another, it may take some time to decide to pursue legal action. A potential plaintiff needs to be aware though of the strict time limits for filing that exist, because missing this deadline will mean that no lawsuit can ever be filed - period. So, it’s important to immediately contact an experienced injury lawyer for advice. Accident, workers comp and medical malpractice cases can often be very complex. So, it’s best to find a legal team like that at Sexner Injury Lawyers LLC that can be trusted to handle your important case with all the attention that it deserves. A track record of million-dollar successes, such as we have achieved is also very important. But of equal importance is finding a partner with compassion who understands how personal this is to you. At Sexner Injury Lawyers LLC, we treat our clients as family.

Depending on the type of injury case, how a lawsuit is filed, where it’s filed, and who can be named as defendants will differ greatly. For a car accident or a slip & fall accident, a lawsuit can often be filed quickly at the county clerk, such as at the Daley Center in Chicago. If the injury involved an accident that happened during the course of work though, it’s called a Petition and it’s not really considered a lawsuit against the employer. Petitions for job-related accidents also get filed in a different location which is the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission. Although Workers Compensation and Injury cases don’t require any special permission to file (which is why they can be filed sometimes the same day), Medical Malpractice cases are much different. Before a case can be filed against a doctor or a hospital, a “certificate of merit” must first be obtained which states a qualified medical expert has reviewed the facts and believes malpractice occurred.

Depending on the type of case and the particular facts, sometimes a lawsuit is immediately filed while other times the lawyer will instead engage in negotiations with the insurance company first. If the Statute of Limitations is rapidly approaching, it may be wise to get the paperwork filed asap. Otherwise, an experienced injury lawyer will often try to negotiate a settlement first, because most clients would prefer to put matters behind them sooner rather than later if possible. Then, if the insurance company refuses to be reasonable, a lawsuit can always be filed later. Negotiations are never binding on a client, so there’s usually no harm in trying that path first. The decision about whether to try negotiations first or to file the lawsuit instead is an important and strategic decision, which we make in consultation with our clients. An offer will never be accepted at Sexner Injury Lawyers LLC without obtaining the approval of our client first.

If a monetary sum of money can be agreed upon between the legal team and the insurance company, this is called a settlement. Except in the simplest of fender-bender cases, most negotiations that lead to settlements are the result of aggressive back-and-forth negotiations between a knowledgeable law firm and the insurer. These negotiations might take weeks, months or sometimes years to get to the point where a fair agreement that properly compensates our client or their family can be reached. But no settlement is ever agreed to at Sexner Injury Lawyers LLC without client approval. If a settlement can’t be reached, then the case will go to trial; either a “bench” trial (where the Judge alone makes the decision), or a “jury” trial (where a group of people from the community decide). Worker’s Comp cases work differently than this. If the court decides that the defendant is liable, a determination is also made regarding how much must be paid in monetary compensation.

If a case has been settled directly with the insurance company by your lawyers, you can rest assured that within a reasonable period of time, the insurer will write a check for the agreed upon amount. The check will be sent to your attorney’s office, who will then contact you to obtain your signature in order to disburse the funds to you. When we first begin work on your case, we’ll agree on the attorney fee percentage, up front and in writing. Attorney fees typically run from 20% to 33% of the recovery depending on the type of injury case involved. At Sexner Injury Attorneys LLC, there is never a legal fee unless we’re successful on your behalf. So, no matter how long or how hard we work on your case, if for some reason there’s no recovery (which is unlikely), there will be no need to worry about paying our office as the fee will be zero. You’re in experienced and compassionate hands with us.