Levinson and Stefani Injury Lawyers

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Defective hip implant could be cause for legal claims

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Auto accident victims could be entitled to compensation

We handle lots of collision scenarios that deal with short-term and long-term injuries resulting from auto and truck accidents. Most of the time, cases stem from the crash itself, but lately, we’ve been reviewing cases that develop after the fact, as in situations that involve faulty implants and defective products. That includes hip implants, the symptoms of which may not appear for years after the procedure.

You may know from the news that the The Stryker Rejuvenate/ABG II metal-on-metal hip implant has caused serious damage lately. Stryker, one of the world’s largest medical equipment manufacturers, has committed more than $2 billion to settle injury claims as it relates to the company’s frequently-used hip implant, subsequently recalled en mass. There could be more suits where that came from.

The company halted all global sales and production of the ABG II shortly after the company issued what it calls an “Urgent Field Safety Notice,” pointing out the potential health hazards like corrosion and “fretting,” an unsettling term that describes minute shards of metal leaching into muscle tissue and the bloodstream. It often requires revision surgery to correct allergic reactions, extreme discomfort and noticeable changes in mobility.

The lawsuits filed against Stryker continue to grow, even after the recall that dates back to 2012. It’s of particular significance to auto collision victims who, for lack of a better phrase, are suffering because of unfortunate timing. If you’ve been in an accident recently, one that required the implementation of the AGB II, you may be entitled to damages because of the effects of a defective product.

This recall has our office reviewing several potential cases and impending lawsuits to determine if our clients have a case. There are currently more than 500 lawsuits pending due to the Stryker recall, some of which may include clients of Levinson and Stefani who were in need of surgery in recent years.

If you happen to be one of the few whom have suffered because of this recall, you could be entitled to financial compensation. We are offering free consultations to determines if such cases are viable, and we welcome the opportunity to study aspects of your case.

Stryker recalled the AGB II nearly four years ago, later settling several cases in 2014 after complaints from numerous patients led to a massive recall. The symptoms of the defective hip are noticeable. They include prolonged pain in the hip or leg, swelling and a change in walking ability. Plaintiffs have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements, and some prospective plaintiffs may be entitled to more based on the severity of their condition.

The basis for this particular case is an indication of negligence. There is clear evidence to suggest that Stryker distributed the implants despite failing to test them properly. And now Stryker is paying the price, literally and figuratively. If you believe you have experienced symptoms due to a defective implant, contact our office and we’ll review your case during a free consultation. Our objective is to hold negligent parties accountable, and we will work hard on your behalf to make sure, as best as possible, that it doesn’t happen again.

Illinois is offering free car seat assessments tomorrow

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Child Passenger Safety Week comes to a close with National Seat Check Saturday

There comes a time when every child takes the next step. Or in this case, the next seat. For as long as I’ve been practicing law, and for as long as I’ve been a parent, one of the more nerve-wracking topics that inevitably becomes a source of frustration for adults has been car seats. Everyone has questions about them—their safety, their installation, the right time to swap seats for a growing toddler—and everyone has, at one point, expressed insecurities when making the leap from infant seat to convertible seat to no-seat at all.

My daughter, who just turned six, took the leap from rear-facing seat to convertible seat just a few years ago. Now, she’s settled into a convertible. In no time at all, she’ll soon outgrow it. The cycle has predictably been tough to keep up with. Each time we’ve had to re-think car seats, we’ve had to consider models, styles, purpose and safety. And when it comes to safety, we’ve gone the extra mile to ensure the best-case scenario. But even still the adjustment has never been as smooth as we’d like it to be.

We’ve seen it all: seats that need rubber mats to prevent them from slipping, harnesses with five-point buckles and the ever-challenging, ever-confounding booster seat. Invariably, there’s always something new to learn.

Car seat guidelines form the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Case in point: news coming out of Ann Arbor last week had some interesting stats about the dangers associated with boosters. It turns out children who ride in boosters are twice as likely to suffer serious injuries or even death due to an auto accident, but a new study from the University of Michigan is also showing that booster seat-aged kids are also less likely to have their seats inspected properly. An analysis from the University of Michigan Health System, which conducted booster seat inspections for kids 4 and older, showed that just 1 in 10 inspections covered booster seat-aged children ages 4–7.

As Child Passenger Safety Week comes to a close this weekend, along with National Seat Check Saturday taking place tomorrow, there are several opportunities for you to brush up on your car seat education. Several stations in Illinois, including a family safety fair taking place tomorrow in Downers Grove at Illinois Tollway headquarters (2700 Ogden Avenue) from 10am–2pm, are encouraging parents to get their seats inspected as part of the nationwide awareness campaign. Roughly 90 percent of child safety seats inspected by the Illinois State Police are installed improperly, according to records kept by state police. That’s a significantly high percentage with all the technology and awareness campaigns going on in this day and age. So take precautionary measures and find a service station near you. If you’re anything like my wife and me, you’re going to learn more than you ever thought you would.

 

Brushing up on best-practices during Illinois Rail Safety Week

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Just remember: There will always be another train

Ken and I are daily Metra riders, so it’s worth noting that this week is Illinois Rail Safety Week (Sept. 13–19). Admittedly, rail safety is something that I, and likely most commuters, take for granted. For one thing, it’s easy to forget that rail accidents account for a huge percentage of fatalities and collisions in the United States. Over 2,000 auto-rail collisions took place in 2014, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, 269 of which were fatalities and 849 of which resulted in some type of injury.

Also in 2014, WBEZ’s Curious City ran a provocative story about Metra delays, so often considered by riders as groan-inducing inconveniences, as much more than a simple delay. Northwestern University’s Ian Savage discovered that, in 2014, rail accidents happened more often in Illinois than any other state in the country. Pulling info from the Illinois Commerce Commission from 2004–2012, Savage learned that 338 pedestrian fatalities occurred by train within a six-county radius of Chicago, 53 percent of which were deemed non-suicidal.

Being a city with one of the more dense populations in the country, Chicago ranks high on the list of metropolis’s combatting some significant statistics, as does the state of Illinois.

For example:

  • During 2013, Illinois ranked 3rd in the U.S. in grade crossing fatalities with 16
  • During 2013, Illinois ranked 2nd in the U.S. in trespass fatalities with 26
  • In 2014, 134 crashes occurred at public highway-rail grade crossings, resulting in 55 personal injuries and 24 fatalities in Illinois
  • In 2014, 48 trespassing incidents occurred in Illinois, resulting in 29 pedestrian fatalities and 19 others while trespassing on railroad property

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police has partnered with 286 state traffic safety agencies and private companies to bring greater awareness about rail safety to the public. This week, you’ll see several folks handing out pamphlets and SWAG with tips and best practices to make sure you’re as safe as possible. You might think their they’re obvious, but then again, that’s what awareness campaigns are all about: reminding you of those overlooked perils that can get you in trouble.

So remember: Look both ways before crossing. Always expect a train. Trains can run on any track, at any time, in either direction. Don’t get stuck on the track. Before you cross, be sure there is room on the other side to completely clear the tracks. Trains cannot stop quickly. The average freight train traveling 55mph takes a mile or more to stop. If you’re running late, it’s not worth it to run in front of a train – there will always be another train.

Info pulled from “Key Safety Tips at Highway Rail Grade Crossings,” courtesy of Operation Lifesaver.

From a lawyer’s perspective: The brilliant, and underappreciated significance of ‘The Golden Girls’

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I was a senior in high school when the The Golden Girls aired 30 years ago today. The NBC hit about four female retirees who shared a home in suburban Miami debuted back in 1985 to widespread critical acclaim, which it sustained for seven seasons, earning two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series.

In 2014, the Writers Guild of America ranked the show No. 69 on its list of “101 Best Written TV Series Of All Time,” not least of which is due, in part, to its unconventional and forward-thinking premise. For all its sweet humor, there was something uniquely revolutionary about casting four senior-aged women to lead a network sitcom, in the throes of what one could argue was a culture still struggling to relinquish the Boys Club mentality.

The top three shows in 1985, after The Golden Girls, according to IMDB, were: Growing Pains starring Alan Thicke, MacGyver with Richard Dean Anderson, and Small Wonder with Tiffany Brissette (in which Brissette isn’t even human; she’s a robot created by her inventor father). Other popular shows in the ’80s: Cheers, Hill Street Blues, The Cosby Show, Newhart, and Star Trek. Count at least one male lead in each of the aforementioned shows. That’s not to suggest it was all male, all the time (The Facts of Life and Murder She Wrote stand out as two prime examples). By most executive’s standards, though, The Golden Girls was a huge gamble, a roll of the dice that ultimately paid off.

The Golden Girls predated some radical changes in the legal world, too, that would ultimately come to fruition in the early ’90s, and later, the 21st century. Back in 1985, Sandra Day O’Connor was the only female Supreme Court Justice on the bench; Janet Reno was still eight years away from becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wouldn’t be appointed to the Supreme Court until 1993. Today, three female Supreme Court Justices (Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) are making history; Loretta Lynch is serving as the first female African American Attorney General, and a formidable former Secretary of State (who graduated from Yale Law in 1973) is making her second run for the Presidency in 2016. Times have changed for the better and in much more radical ways.

It would be a stretch to suggest that The Golden Girls was, on its own, an agent for change in a world coming into its own. But part of me believes that a show like The Golden Girls, so timeless in its humor and so revolutionary in its concept, was able to inform popular thinking because of its mainstream fame; we saw them as larger-than-life in the twilight of life, and even then, there was never more to live for. It was dependence, independence, and freedom in its own way.

Before Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia ever hit the screen, I think a lot of TV executives couldn’t believe that four retirees living in Miami could be anything but a tepid plot. Could anyone conceive, at the time, of a female Attorney General that would go on to make some of the most consequential policy in the history of our country? And would anyone believe that three Supreme Court Justices would be doing the same in 2015? Or that Loretta Lynch could take on a giant like FIFA? I think a lot of us believed it, even if it took too long to get there. Thanks to shows like The Golden Girls, we were maybe able to get there sooner than expected.

Spinal injuries and the long road to recovery

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Auto accidents account for 36 percent of new SCI cases

Part of representing injury victims is conducting a thorough analysis of their injuries. When we submit images of dismantled cars and busted limbs, or talk in detail about the drunk driver who decided to get behind the wheel of a car on his/her way home from a bar, it’s not to indulge in gruesome details but to point out the consequences of dangerous conduct. For many of our clients that have suffered because of carelessness, it’s a long road to recovery, even a life-long affliction that never goes away.

Spinal injuries are some of the worst injuries we see on a regular basis. And unlike other injuries, they’re impossibly difficult to overcome both physically and financially. We’re talking damage to generative tissue, disc fractures and limb paralysis that require long hours of rehab. That’s to say nothing of the medical bills. The average yearly health care, living expenses and estimated lifetime costs attributed to Spinal Chord Injuries (SCI), hovers around $70,000 per year. That’s taking into account several financial variables but you get the idea. What’s worse is that victims go broke on their way to a civil case, which insurance companies aim to settle for barely a fraction of what most people would consider fair compensation. That’s a different conversation altogether. It’s these types of cases that ultimately cause more frustration than anything else, the injury notwithstanding.

The Rehab Institute of Chicago sees these cases each day. Michele Lee was one of them. Michele, just 26-years-old, was in car accident that fractured one of her vertebrae, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. You can read about it on the Rehab Institute’s website. She suffered limited mobility in her hands and had trouble breathing. She eventually made her way back to China, only to be disappointed by the treatment she was receiving. Several hospital stints later, all of which turned out to be costly and ineffective, Lee wound up at RIC. Through the Institute’s Second Look program, she was able to get detailed evaluations and work her way back toward a relatively normal life here in Chicago.

Lee is just one of hundreds of thousands of people around the world dealing with chronic conditions that has turned into an epidemic. Roughly 450,000 people are living with SCI in the United States, 12,000 of which are newly classified each year. Thirty-six percent of all new cases are the result of motor vehicle accidents, says the Shepherd Center, a private medical hospital in Atlanta that specializes in SCI. Think about that for a minute: 36 percent of new cases are the result of motor vehicle accidents. That’s close to half. The World Health Organization notes that 90 percent of Spinal Chord Injuries are the result of traumatic causes like road traffic crashes, falls and violence. However you want to look at it, whether by global region or economic status, I think we can all agree the stats are not good.

What we aim to achieve through the legal system is to provide fair compensation for those accident victims who have suffered the consequences of negligent activity. It’s no coincidence that nearly half of spinal injuries are related to auto accidents, as they can be vicious and unexpected. We’ve handled many of these types of cases, and they’re not easy. They’re uncomfortable. And many times, it’s our job to recreate the events leading up to an accident, much of which is painful for client. We’re also here to understand the injuries of our clients as comprehensively as possible, something that most people wouldn’t necessarily assume a trial lawyer would be inclined to do. We take depositions, hire expert witnesses and gather as much information as possible to make the lives of our clients easier in the face of incomprehensible circumstances.

That’s always been our priority, and it always will be.

Consumer Reports’ ‘Worst Cars’: Is Fiat Chrysler on your safety watch list?

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Consumer Reports has released its annual list of ‘Worst Cars.’ There’s one company that stands out among the rest.

When Consumer Reports reveals its annual list of the “Worst Cars” each October, there’s at least one question I ask myself: Do these so-called “worst cars” ever get better?

Let’s compare the top four “worst cars” of 2015 with the worst of 2014: The 2015 list includes the Chrysler 200, the Landrover Discovery Sport, the Lexus NX 200t/300h and the Kia Sedona. The 2014 list ranks the Scion tC, the Chevy Spark, the Scion iQ, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Mitsubishi Mirage, the Smart for Two and the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited as “worst cars” of the year.

Consumer Reports ranks these and other vehicles based on several factors like fuel economy and the way a car actually feels on the road. For my money, though, I’m thinking about safety. So is, in part, Consumer Reports, which states: “Safety remains a top concern for new-car shoppers, and fortunately, today’s modern cars offer more occupant protection and accident avoidance technologies than the typical model being traded in. But not all cars are equal; there are clearly those models that perform better in our dynamic tests, as well as crash tests conducted by the government and insurance industry.”

So being that not all cars are created equal, it’s no surprise that the “worst cars” list is something of an attention grabber. While the top 5–10 worst cars grab headlines each fall, other models find lesser prominence in subcategories like sedan and SUV, making the full report much more robust than what you’d think, and with many more brand name vehicles. Combing through the list and taking into account all these various subcategories, there’s at least one company that stands above (or below?) the rest. That’s Fiat Chrysler. For the last two years, Fiat Chrysler’s vehicles have been featured more times than any other company; five cars made last year’s list, which is now up to seven in 2015.

If you’ve been following the news, you know that Fiat Chrysler has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Two weeks ago, Chrysler recalled 200,000 2014 Jeep Cherokees because of faulty windshield wipers. Earlier this summer, two computer engineers successfully hacked the computer console of a Jeep Cherokee, deliberately leading the driver (a writer for WIRED magazine) to a ditch. The car conglomerate later recalled thousands of Cherokees after the article was published. By then the damage was done.

According to data gathered by The Detroit News, Fiat Chrysler has accounted for almost one-third of all U.S. auto recalls in 2015. This year the company set a record for 10.2 million vehicles out of 24 recall campaigns. To top things off, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration slapped Fiat Chrysler with $105 million fine for improperly recalling vehicles as part of a dozen campaigns over the last two years, the largest fine ever imposed by the NHTSA. The number was partly determined because Chrysler admitted that it failed to fix problems, or was slow to inform consumers of the defects.

So what, if anything, is changing at Fiat Chrysler? That’s a question that has yet to be answered. Regardless, the “Worst Cars” report is a barometer for consumers, one that carries weight for insurers and lawyers who are quick to take note of record-breaking fines and rankings on unflattering lists. And for Fiat Chrysler, the trust factor is getting lower and lower. Consumers should be taking note of such trends, asking themselves if any of these rankings, recalls and bad press is a byproduct of a corporate culture that’s prone to make questionable business decisions than consumer-driven ones.

Fiat Chrysler should be taking note, too, primarily about consumers who deserve safe and secure vehicles. Otherwise next year’s list will feature more of the same.