Missouri Injury Law Blog

Recently I settled an Illinois Workers Compensation case for $500,000, see Illinois Work Comp Death Case Settlement. Now that the Illinois worker's compensation case is resolved I am pursuing an Illinois products liability death lawsuit resulting from a improperly manufactured or designed cantilever that did not close and thus failed to prevent the worker from falling to his untimely death. A good Illinois personal injury lawyer must look beyond just the worker's compensation liability and investigate other potential defendants and theories of legal liability that allow the client to recovery beyond workers compensation, as the amount recoverable is limited by regulation.

When is there more to recover than just work comp? In the above case, the clients came to me because their first lawyer refused to pursue the products liability case and just wanted to represent them on the Illinois work comp case. The products liability case in this matter is what is known as a 3rd party claim. Generally, workers' compensation statutes and regulations prevent any other recovery by an injured worker or his family other than from work comp insurance through the work comp courts. Recovery is limited and regulated. However, when another party besides the employer is at fault there may exist a third party personal injury case. Many lawyers just want the work comp case and do not want to pursue the other parties, if you find yourself in this situation call me, because we always look into that possibility, and in the above case lead to an Illinois personal injury products liability wrongful death case. As in the above case, the original Illinois work comp attorney refused to take the products liability case, through investigation we have discovered that the cantilever is defective and thus the family has a claim worth potentially millions of dollars. Fortunately, they contacted me and we were able to explore these options and find a wrongful death products liability case.

What is a products liability case? A products liability case is simply as case wherein a defective product caused personal injury. In the above case, the cantilever malfunctioned or was improperly designed as it failed to close, allowing the lanyard to come unhooked from a water tower and allow the worker to fall, causing his unfortunate death. The specific cause of the malfunction I cannot get into at this point, however, as the picture to the right demonstrates, the cantilever fails to close and leaves over a one inch gap. Therefore, based on the facts and witness testimony regarding the fall it will show that had the clip closed all the way the lanyard would not have come unhooked and the worker would not have fallen from the top of the water tower and died. The defect is the libility, the circumstances leading to the fall are the causation, and the death is the damages, the three general requirements for a successful Missouri or Illinois personal injury lawsuit that an injury lawyer looks for.