Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer August 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford The lights were out for a four-block area down 95th Street in Oak Lawn due to a malfunction that Commonwealth Edison repaired, but because of a lack of communication or just plain laziness, the street lights were not back on for five days. On the fourth night, a woman crossed 95th Street at Kenton Avenue, an intersection where there’s a bus stop. It’s dark…
Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer July 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford I recently wrote a column about how proud I am to be a lawyer and even prouder that my daughter, Erin, completed law school and passed the bar exam. She now clerks for an appellate court justice in Chicago. I received many calls and letters including an e-mail from a downstate lawyer who read the column after practicing law for 25 years. He called…
Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer June 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford For years, Illinois courts have protected landowners from obvious dangers and risks on their property if it involved fire, drowning and falling from a height. These three dangers were considered examples of a per se obvious danger. Mt. Zion State Bank & Trust v. Consolidated Communications, Inc., 169 Ill.2d 110, 118, 660 N.E.2d 863, 863 (1995). A new wrinkle has been added to the…
Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer May 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford The issue of recusal arose recently in the matter involving the misuse of campaign funds by Jesse Jackson Jr., and his wife, Sandra, both of whom pleaded guilty. On Feb. 20, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Wilkins, who was assigned the case and will sentence the former congressman on June 28 and his wife on July 1, wrote a four-page memorandum regarding the parties’…
Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer April 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford I recently returned from an American Bar Association meeting in Texas where one of the Continuing Legal Education programs offered was titled, “The Juice Isn’t Worth the Squeeze: The Impact of Tort Reform on Plaintiffs’ Lawyers and Access to Civil Justice.” A panel of nearly a half-dozen lawyers and judges from Texas headed by Stephen Daniels, research professor for the American Bar Foundation in…
Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer March 1, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford A hospital patient goes into cardiac arrest and a “code blue” is called. An independent contractor physician from the emergency room responds as part of his job and he negligently intubates the patient. The patient, as a result, suffers permanent brain damage. The family files a negligence action against the hospital and the physician. The doctor responds by saying that because he was a…
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Clifford’s Notes, Chicago Lawyer February 5, 2013 By Robert A. Clifford Jimmy Stewart, one of my favorite actors, plays a small-town criminal defense lawyer in “Anatomy of a Murder.” He represents an Army officer arrested for killing a bartender in a trailer park. The self-admitted perpetrator said he did so out of passion because the barkeep allegedly raped and beat his wife, but there was no evidence beyond a black eye to prove the claim….