Justia Lawyer Rating for David M. Barish

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On January 1, 2015, the Illinois Pregnancy Accommodation Law, an amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act, went into effect, providing greater protection for pregnant employees. Now all employers in the State of Illinois are required to make reasonable accommodations for “pregnancy, childbirth, or medical or common conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth” upon request by the affected employee. The new amendment expands the protections of prior disability discrimination laws in Illinois, which did not cover accommodations for most pregnant employees who were otherwise healthy. Under the new law, virtually every pregnant employee is entitled to a pregnancy-related accommodation. The Illinois Pregnancy Discrimination Law and Illinois Human Rights Act are State laws which provide protections to pregnant employees in Illinois in addition to those protections under the Federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act under Title VII.

In order to assert your rights under the Illinois Pregnancy Accommodation Law, you must make a request for a reasonable accommodation. Upon that request, your employer may require you to provide documentation from your health care provider regarding the need for the requested accommodation. However, your employer may only require your doctor to provide the medical justification for the requested accommodation, a description of the types of accommodations which are medically advisable, the date when the accommodations became medically advisable, and the probable duration of the need for the accommodation. Both the employee and the employer are required to engage in timely, good faith, and meaningful exchange to determine effective and reasonable accommodations.

Once you have requested a reasonable accommodation for your pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition and provided the relevant documentation from your health care provider, it is unlawful for your employer to deny your accommodation request unless it can show that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the ordinary operation of the business. An “undue hardship” on the employer means an accommodation that would be prohibitively expensive or disruptive to the employer’s business when considering the nature and cost of the accommodation; the overall financial resources and size of the employer; the number of employees and location of the employer’s facilities; and the nature of the employer’s operations.

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Bus-versus-bicyclist and bus-versus-pedestrian accidents can often inflict massive, and sometimes catastrophic, injuries, even at low speeds. The curb weight of a transit bus is 10-16 tons while empty, and can be 15-22 tons when fully loaded. Whether your bus accident occurred at 5 mph or 45 mph, chances are it inflicted serious harm that will affect you negatively for a long time, if not permanently. To ensure that you get the compensation you deserve, you have to be able to demonstrate, with persuasive evidence, all of the damages that you suffered, from medical expenses to lost wages to pain and suffering, among other things. To recover everything the law says you should, reach out to a skilled Chicago injury attorney about your case.

As an example of how serious a bus accident can be, consider the injury incident of D.M., which was reported by WGN. D.M. was a woman who worked as a bartender on Chicago’s northwest side. One recent Friday night, after getting off work, D.M. bicycled home alongside her boyfriend. Before she reached home, however, she was involved in a massive collision with a Chicago Transit Authority bus. According to news reports, the bus turned left and slammed directly into the woman. D.M.’s crash left her with a skull fracture, broken arm, broken rib and a compound fracture of one leg.

Once you’ve decided to sue for the harm you’ve suffered, your case often turns to demonstrating liability and showing the extent of your damages. Anyone seriously injured in a bus crash is going to have substantial medical bills, which can vary in their sum total based upon the severity of the injuries and the injury victim’s insurance status. If you’ve suffered major injuries, like bone fractures, spinal injuries or a brain injury, you may need extensive ongoing medical care in the future, which could greatly increase the total of your medical expense damages.

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At the end of 2017, United Airlines (now known as “United Continental Holdings, Inc.” after the merger with Continental Airlines) announced that it would be issuing each of its flight attendants a new Tumi brand bag. In March 2018, United Airlines began requiring its flights attendants use the newly issued two-wheel or four- wheel “rollaboard” Tumi brand bags.

Unfortunately, the transition to the new Tumi brand bags has created numerous issues for United Airlines flight attendants. Almost immediately, United Airlines flight attendants began noticing that these bags are awkward, hard to maneuver, and in some circumstances, even dangerous to use.

As flight attendants already often need to be performing physically strenuous tasks, moving quickly, working in tight and awkward spaces, and lifting, pushing, and pulling heaving luggage, the additional requirement to use these awkward and uncomfortable bags is unfortunately causing injuries to flight attendants’ wrists, arms, shoulder, backs, necks, and legs.

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Stories in the news can remind us of many important things. A recent headline and story from England once again highlights the fact that being a member of an airline cabin crew can be a dangerous job. According to an Aviation Herald report, a flight attendant aboard an Irish airline’s plane was seriously injured when a beverage/meal cart broke free and crashed into his legs. As much as these news stories provide important reminders about the risks of being a flight attendant, it is also important to remember that, if you are hurt working as a member of a cabin crew, you may have certain legal options available to you to compensate you for your injuries. To learn more about the exact options you have, be certain to talk to a knowledgeable Chicago injury attorney.

From the cockpit of the airline’s Cologne-to-London flight, it perhaps seemed unremarkable as the flight was landing. However, in the cabin, a catering cart had broken free and, when the pilot hit the brakes, the cart raced toward a flight attendant and slammed into him. The flight attendant had been sitting in a passenger seat on the only partially-filled flight and, just moments before the cart crashed into him, raised his knees to his chest to protect himself. The impact seriously injured the flight attendant, inflicting a “suspected fracture” of his left femur.

This flight attendant’s broken leg is not the first time a runaway cart has caused havoc aboard a flight. Last year, a cart aboard an American Airlines flight slammed into a passenger’s head and allegedly impacted him with sufficient force to cause the man chronic traumatic brain injury and post-concussive syndrome.

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Last year, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provided some surprising results. In excess of 50% of all Americans will, at some point, need nursing home care, according to the study. The number was well above the 35% previously cited by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Few decisions are more challenging, and more important, than placing a loved one in a nursing home. You are entrusting the facility with one of the most important people in your life. You expect, and you should expect, that your loved one will receive proper care. When a facility fails to deliver on that promise, it may be necessary to take legal action. If that happens, be sure to reach out right away to a Chicago nursing home negligence attorney experienced in these cases.Every three months, the Illinois Department of Public Health publishes a Quarterly Report of Nursing Home Violators. These reports illustrate real-life examples of many of the ways in which a nursing home can fail its patients and fall short of delivering appropriate care. The most recent report, which covered the second quarter (April-June) of 2018, unfortunately showed an increase in the number of violations.

The state divides violations into categories based on the severity of their effects. Type AA violations are ones that “proximately caused” a resident’s death. Type A violations are ones from which “there is a substantial probability that death or serious mental or physical harm will result, or has resulted.” Type B violations are the least severe of the three.

In the second quarter, three type AA violations took place. One occurred at a facility in the small western Illinois town of Aledo. In that case, the staff failed to follow the instructions contained in the patient’s advance directive document (sometimes known as a “living will”). Even though the patient’s document said that the patient desired to receive CPR, the staff did not perform CPR when the patient needed it. The patient died at the facility.

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Achieving success in your Illinois school injury case can be accomplished in a variety of ways. It can be done by taking a case to trial and securing a favorable verdict and award of damages. It can also be achieved, however, by securing a settlement. Each of jury verdicts and settlements have their own distinct advantages. A settlement has the potential benefit of providing you with money more quickly and saving you the potential stress and time that often go with a trial. Whether a settlement does or does not make sense for you is just one of many essential legal decisions in which your case can benefit from the knowledge and experience of a skilled Chicago injury lawyer.One recent example of a school injury case that led to a successful settlement was the case of L.R., which was reported by the Belleville News Democrat. L.R. was a student with special needs who attended school in the Illinois town of Belleville, which is near St. Louis. Some of L.R.’s disabilities were physical, and, because of that, he used a “gait trainer,” which is a support device for mobility or for assisting those learning to walk. Allegedly, while the student was using the gait trainer one day, he was left unsupervised for a length of time. The lawsuit alleged that the duration of the unsupervised period was long enough for the boy to wander off his gait trainer and travel across a gymnasium and over to a flight of stairs, down which he fell, suffering injuries, according to the report.

A fall like the one L.R. suffered can have serious consequences. The victim can suffer broken bones, soft tissue injuries, and disfigurement. Especially for people with physical disabilities like L.R., these kinds of accidents can carry with them an increased risk of future injury.

L.R.’s mother sued the school for its failure to provide proper supervision and safety for her son. Suing a public school can be complex in Illinois. They are generally immune from liability for acts of negligence. In order to succeed and secure an award of damages, you have to show that the school employee acted recklessly in causing the accident that injured the child. This could include things like failing to provide proper safety protection (like eye or ear protection) that the teacher knows is potentially dangerous, or failing to excuse a child from a physical activity even after the child presented a doctor’s note.

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Attorney General Madigan today issued guidance to address the specific impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, on public sector unions in Illinois and clarify the law for Illinois public bodies, school districts and other public employers. Click Here to read the full article via the Illinois Attorney General‘s website.

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When you are injured in a vehicle accident, one of the key steps in the process may be finding the appropriate legal grounds to assert your case, not only against the driver, but also against the driver’s employer. Sometimes, the employer can be indirectly liable through what’s called “vicarious liability”. Other times, an employer may be liable for its own mistakes, like hiring and retaining an unsafe driver who eventually caused the accident that injured you. To learn more about your options if you’ve been hurt in a crash, talk to a skilled Chicago injury lawyer about your situation.

CBS 2 reported recently on the rash of accidents involving Chicago Transit Authority busses. In one instance, according to the report, a CTA bus driver changed lanes to get around a car, then proceeded through the intersection on a red light. The westbound bus collided with a southbound car in Humboldt Park, causing serious injuries, including a ruptured spleen, broken bones and a traumatic brain injury for the driver of the southbound car.

The driver of the southbound car received a payment of roughly $8 million. The evidence she had in her case included proof that the CTA hired the driver despite his having on his driving record citations for negligent driving, failure to obey a traffic signal, improper lane usage and five speeding violations.

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