Our Appellate Department has had four favorable appellate court decisions for our clients in the past month. A short synopsis of each case and a discussion of the legal issues and alleged errors involved follows.
Moritz v. West Suburban Hospital and Medical Center (1st Appellate District)
In this case, Jim Bream and Jamie Waynee succeeded in obtaining a dismissal of their client, West Suburban Medical Center, based on motions that the plaintiffs had failed to assert a good faith cause of action against the medical center. Jim and Jamie also obtained an award of attorney’s fees and costs as a sanction against the plaintiffs and their counsel and in the medical center’s favor in excess of $10,000. The plaintiffs subsequently appealed.
The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s sanctions order. Specifically, the appellate court accepted a jurisdictional argument asserted in the medical center’s brief to the effect that due to deficiencies in the plaintiffs’ notice of appeal, the plaintiffs waived the right to challenge their liability for attorney’s fees and costs in the first instance. The appellate court further determined that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in affixing the amount of the attorney’s fees and costs awarded as a sanction. Attorneys Jennifer Medenwald and Chris Keleher worked on the appeal.
Sadigh v. J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc. (1st Appellate District)
In this case, Tom Burke obtained a dismissal of a plaintiff’s complaint stemming from a fatal passenger vehicle tractor-trailer collision. The mechanics of the accident were such that after the driver lost control of the passenger vehicle, it crossed two lanes of traffic and struck and became trapped under the semi trailer. The trailer’s wheels thereafter crushed and penetrated the right front compartment of the passenger vehicle where plaintiff’s decedent was seated. The plaintiff contended, among other allegations, that had the tractor-trailer been equipped with side guards or side protection, the vehicle in which plaintiff’s decedent was riding would have deflected off the side of the tractor-trailer. The plaintiff sued J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc., the owner of the semi tractor-trailer, under a negligence tort theory, contending that J.B. Hunt knew it was feasible and practical to design, manufacture and equip a trailer with side guards or side protection.
The trial court dismissed the plaintiffs’ negligence suit against Tom's client based on Illinois precedent as articulated in Mieher v. Brown, (1973), 54 Ill. 2d 539, and Beattie v. Lindelof, 262 Ill. App. 3d 372 (1st Dist. 1994). Those cases hold, in relevant part, that a manufacturer and owner of a commercial vehicle have no duty to design a vehicle with which it is safe to collide. Plaintiff subsequently appealed, arguing that Mieher and Beattie are no longer good law in Illinois, and alternatively, that the trial court erred in applying Illinois law to her claims. The appellate court determined that Mieher and Beattie controlled and rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the trial court erred in applying Illinois law. Attorney Jennifer Turiello authored the brief submitted to the appellate court and participated in oral argument on the case in June 2009. The deadlines for further appellate review, including the filing of a petition for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, remain pending.
Nweze v. Weiss Memorial Hospital (1st Appellate District)
The plaintiff brought a medical malpractice action against Weiss Memorial Hospital, among other defendants, seeking damages for the alleged wrongful death of his mother. Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that the Hospital and other defendant physicians negligently failed to timely diagnose and treat a bacterial infection, which omission purportedly resulted in plaintiff’s decedent’s death. The action was tried to a jury. Former Q&H attorneys obtained a verdict in the Hospital’s favor and against the plaintiff, with the jury finding no liability and awarding zero damages. Plaintiff later appealed, contending that certain evidentiary errors at trial warranted the reversal of the jury’s verdict and the granting of a new trial. Among other claimed errors, the plaintiff contended that trial court abused its discretion in allowing plaintiff’s expert to be questioned regarding a public reprimand on his medical license. Plaintiff averred that the license censure was not linked to expert’s qualifications as an expert witness or the expert’s standard of care opinions in the case. As an additional, alternative alleged point of error, the plaintiff contended that rehabilitation of the expert witness on the subject of the license reprimand should have been permitted at trial.
On appeal, the appellate court determined that no abuse of discretion occurred as to both issues. Specifically, the appellate court determined that the expert’s license censure was a proper subject of inquiry and cross-examination during trial. Further, the appellate court held that to allow the expert to explain the circumstances surrounding the license censure would have created a sub-trial on a collateral issue and otherwise distracted the jury’s attention from the main issues of determining whether the defendants were negligent or whether the defendants’ negligence was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s decedent’s death. Attorney Jennifer Turiello authored the Hospital’s brief submitted to the appellate court.
Zysko Construction v. White Nights USA, Inc. (1st Appellate District)
Trial attorney Scott Krider succeeded in obtaining a money judgment in excess of $50,000 against Zysko Construction, Inc. for its failure to substantially complete certain carpentry work at a residential property. Scott thereafter filed a motion to pierce Zysko Construction’s corporate veil and impose liability for the money judgment on its proprietors. By way of background, a corporation is an entity separate and apart from its shareholders, directors and officers, who are not as a general rule liable for the corporation’s debts and obligations. However, in certain situations, courts will find shareholders, directors or officers personally liable for corporate obligations through an equitable remedy commonly known as “piercing the corporate veil.” That remedy is meant to attach liability for corporate indebtedness to an individual that uses a corporation merely as an instrumentality to conduct his or her personal business.
The trial court granted the motion to pierce the corporate veil and held Zysko Construction’s owners personally liable for the subject money judgment. Zysko Construction later appealed that ruling. The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s judgment. In doing so, the appellate court noted that Zysko Construction was the mere alter ego or business conduit of its owner, the legal separateness of individual and corporation ceased to exist, and the facts were such that adherence to the separate existence of the corporation would have sanctioned fraud. Attorney Jennifer Turiello authored the brief submitted to the appellate court.
Mach v. Will
County
Sheriff (Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals)
In this case, trial attorneys Terrence Guolee, Paul O’Grady and Matthew Byrne obtained a summary judgment order from Federal District Court Judge James Zagel, dismissing plaintiff’s Title VII age discrimination claim against client, the Will County Sheriff’s Office. Moreover, they were also successful in obtaining a very unusual order from Judge Zagel entering sanctions against the plaintiff equivalent to 5/6th of the attorney fees expended in preparing the defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment and ordered plaintiff to pay all expenses incurred by the Will County Sheriff in defending plaintiff’s claims.
In particular, Judge Zagel noted that of the six different claims brought by plaintiff, five were shown during the discovery phase of the case to have no merit, and the sixth was deserving of dismissal by summary judgment. However, given that plaintiff and his counsel failed to withdraw or dismiss the five meritless claims until after the time that defendants conducted discovery and moved for summary judgment on all of the plaintiff’s claims, the court deemed the litigation to have been conducted in bad faith and sanctions proper. The court then also granted summary judgment on the remaining claim, based on the evidence developed by Q&H showing that the Will County Sheriff’s office properly based the complained of transfer of the officer on the officer’s failure to perform his job in accordance with reasonable expectations.
On appeal, plaintiff’s counsel directed his briefing and argument primarily against the sanction order. Among other arguments, appellate counsel Terrence Guolee and Christopher Keleher supported the sanction award as reasonable given the lack of merit to plaintiff’s claims and supported by the evidence documented at the trial level. The Seventh Circuit agreed and affirmed both the summary judgment and sanctions orders in its opinion released on August 31, 2009. Currently, the time limit is open for petitions for rehearing or further appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
