Rapoport Weisberg & Sims, P.C. is pleased to start off 2019 with news of a record-setting settlement on behalf of a 95-year-old client injured in Chicago while shopping for groceries. As she was shopping, a store employee crashed into her with a platform truck cart that had been so dangerously overloaded the employee could not see where he was pushing it. The truck cart knocked the elderly customer to the ground, resulting in a severe fracture to her hip that required surgical repair.
Rapoport Weisberg & Sims asked the court to accelerate the case based on the client’s age and aggressively pursued discovery on behalf of its client. Initially, the grocery store denied it was negligent or at fault for the accident, and even claimed the elderly customer was at fault and responsible for the accident by “failing to keep a proper lookout.” However, once a store surveillance tape surfaced during litigation which showed the entire incident on tape, the defendant withdrew its defenses and admitted it was at fault for causing the devastating injury.
After Rapoport Weisberg & Sims retained experts who produced a compelling day-in-the-life video, the defendant grocery store agreed to pay $1,075,000 to resolve the case short of trial. The settlement is the highest ever paid for an injury in the state of Illinois to a victim over the age of 90 and was achieved with less than 6 months of litigation.