Lisa Knapp claimed she received negligent medical treatment from her doctors. She sued one of the doctors and the hospital he was affiliated with for medical malpractice. In her complaint, she identified George O’Neil, another of her doctors, as a respondent in discovery. O’Neil proved difficult to serve. Eventually though,…
This case is more about res judicata than appellate jurisdiction, but it teaches an important lesson about final and appealable orders. Jane Doe had a successful in vitro fertilization at a fertility clinic, the Center for Human Reproduction. Two things caused Jane and John (husband) to sue. First, after the…
Rosemary Mackin was unhappy with the trial court’s division of property and the denial of maintenance in her divorce case, so she appealed. The last order by the trial court disallowed child support, but set it “for review after the expiration of 180 days for examination of the financial circumstances…
Neringa Valkiunas and Jeffrey Olsen were in a protracted custody battle. Neringa first appealed from a custody modification order that made Jeffrey residential custodian. That first appeal was dismissed by the Second District Illinois Appellate Court because, when the appeal was filed, two civil contempt petitions were pending in the…
When George Smith was a police officer in Chicago, he contributed to the Police Pension Fund. When Smith resigned from the police force, the Police Pension Fund refunded his $18,000 contribution. A few years later, Smith became a state court judge in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. He…
Michael Gagliardo died in a racing-car accident. Paulette (sister) and Margaret (wife) administered Michael’s estate. They hired Quinlan & Carroll to investigate whether the estate could sue for wrongful death. Paulette later hired Duane Morris, another law firm, to open an estate in court. Duane Morris was on the job…
Leonard Kulisek went to Walgreen pharmacy intending to purchase allopurinol for his gout. The pharmacist gave Leonard a bottle marked “allopurinol,” but it really contained glipizide, a diabetes medication that lowers blood sugar. Thinking he was taking allopurinol, Leonard ingested the glipizide. Leonard suffered severe kidney and brain problems that…
Magdalena Wierzbicki claimed her doctors failed to make a proper diagnosis of her medical problem. So she sued Drs. Gleason and Danczkewycz for medical malpractice. The case was more than two and a half years old when she dismissed it voluntarily. A year later she re-filed it. Then the procedural…
Kerr-McGee Chemical and Lefton Iron & Metal were fighting out a 15-year dispute over the cost of cleaning up an environmentally contaminated industrial site. The first time the case was in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the court ruled that Kerr-McGee was entitled to the clean-up costs from Lefton.…
An inmate in a supermax prison sued prison officials in a mandamus action. The inmate sought an order preventing controlled feeding and requiring a nurse to attend to the inmate’s self-inflicted wounds outside of his cell. The prison officials asked for, and in July 2006 received, a dismissal of the…