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Chicago Attorneys Obtain Defense Verdict in $25 Million Personal Injury Action in Cook County Illinois

Chicago attorneys Alan M. Bernover and Steven M. Brandstedt obtained a defense verdict in a personal injury action filed in Cook County, Illinois. Plaintiff, a 42 year-old union carpenter, alleged that while performing his work in disassembling a trade show at a local hotel and convention center he sustained a career-ending low back injury as a result of slipping on carpet tiles that had been damaged because of a forklift. Plaintiff claimed that the negligent operation of a forklift, under the supervision of the Defendant trade show general contractor, created an unreasonably dangerous condition of which he was unaware. Plaintiff claimed that he was loading bookcases into a large shipping crate when he lost his footing sustaining injury to the L4-5 level of his lumbar spine. Plaintiff alleged the general contractor Defendant’s failure to train forklift drivers, supervise their work, inspect the area at this location, failure to properly and safely operate the forklift and warn of the unreasonably dangerous condition was the proximate cause of his claimed permanent injury.

The defense maintained first that Plaintiff was not injured in the manner alleged as there was no evidence of any forklift damage to the floor of the convention center other than Plaintiff’s own testimony and that of his coworker and long-time friend; secondly, that Plaintiff’s decision to lift and move the bookcases by himself caused his own injuries; and, finally that Plaintiff’s claimed injuries were not career-ending in nature and were ongoing because Plaintiff failed to follow the treatment recommendations of one or more of his treating physicians.

Though Cook County has a reputation as a plaintiff-friendly forum, the defense successfully moved in pretrial motions to bar large portions of the testimony of Plaintiff’s expert economist and several key opinions based on speculation and conjecture, and further defeated Plaintiff’s pretrial motions seeking to bar critical evidence which ultimately established Plaintiff’s own conduct caused his injuries.

Throughout jury selection and the trial the Defendant appealed to the hard-working nature of the jury members selected and focused on trial themes of working safe and working hard as not being mutually exclusive. After eight days of trial testimony, Plaintiff requested more than $25 million from the jury to compensate him for his claimed loss of past and future earnings, loss of household services, loss of a normal life, and pain and suffering. After only just over an hour of deliberation, on March 23, 2017, the jury returned a verdict for the defense and an express finding that Plaintiff was 100 percent at fault for his injuries.

Alan focuses his practice on insurance defense litigation in the areas of construction negligence, catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death and commercial litigation relating to labor and employment disputes. Alan has represented clients in arbitrations and in numerous jury trials to verdict in state courts throughout Illinois.