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Only one out of 11 cars currently for sale in the American market passed the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) rigorous testing, specifically the small overlap frontal protection test. What this means, according to the IIHS, is that drivers and passengers, depending on which side the accident takes place, are more susceptible to injury and harm from some of the most statistically common types of crashes that only affect the right or left 25% of the…

Last year, less than 30 medical professionals in Illinois were disciplined by the state’s regulatory agency according to a Chicago Tribune article. However, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), disciplined more than triple that number of physicians when responding to investigations beginning in other states. This leads to the unsettling conclusion that the IDFPR may not be allotting enough resources to the task of investigating and punishing doctors with a track record…

Robert Clifford, senior and founding partner of Clifford Law Offices in downtown Chicago, was named the Number One attorney in the state of Illinois for the sixth year in a row by Illinois Super Lawyers. The annual list of Illinois’ Top Ten attorneys, as nominated by their peers, was first created and published by the third-party research group Super Lawyers in 2005. Mr. Clifford has been in the Top Ten, actually the Top Three, for…

Illinois approved a ban on hand-held phones effective Jan. 1, which was already the law in many communities throughout the state including Chicago and Evanston. That law reportedly could hinder the state’s “mobile workforce,” as reported by Mike Riopell in the Daily Herald Business Ledger. Many companies already pay for and provide mobile communications devices for employees that regularly travel on the road for their job functions. With the new ban in place, it raises…

Pamela Sakowicz Menaker, Communications Partner at Clifford Law Offices, recently authored an article for the American Bar Association (ABA) entitled “Text Message Sender May Face Liability for Driver’s Accident” (Nov. 27, 2013). As a contributing editor for the ABA Litigation News, Menaker wrote about a recent New Jersey case which expanded the concept of duty for texters by identifying specific conditions under which the sender of the original message maybe held responsible along with the…

In the wake of NSA, Target data breaches, medical records compromised and other privacy invasions comes word that some health care companies are probing available information on patients in order to target them for telemarketing and direct mail pitches. The Wall Street Journal reported (“Data Mining to Recruit Sick People,” Dec. 17, 2013) that companies specializing in patient recruitment for clinical trials are now turning to pharmaceutical records, data brokers and social networks to identify…

In conjunction with the Hellenic Museum of Chicago, Bob Clifford participated in the retrying of the ancient case of Socrates. The event so popular that it demanded a venue change to a larger forum. The team of lawyers from the last trial was so well received that they have been invited back almost in their entirety for the second trial. Bringing light, not only to history and law, but also to deeper philosophical tenets that…

More than 210,000 patients die each year from preventable causes while in hospitals or under physicians’ care. This number actually indicates a larger issue of an “epidemic of patient harm”, according to a study by the Journal of Patient Safety. People go to hospitals when they are in dire need of medical care or have limited options, but patient trust may be wrongly placed in these institutions’ hands. Multiple causes began this trend of declining…

Children remind us of the innocence and joy of the holidays year-round, which is why it is so important for parents today to monitor the toys their children play with to keep the kids safe. Product recalls are down by almost 66% over the past five years, but it is stringent safety mandates, dangerous toys being seized upon their import and vigilant parents that are responsible for this laudable trend. Most toys are not meant…