In Illinois, you generally have two years from the date of a crash to file a personal injury lawsuit, and the amount you recover depends heavily on how much fault the other side can push onto you. That is the short answer, and it is why the first few weeks after a collision matter so much. If you are hurting, missing work, and already fielding calls from an adjuster, the confusion you feel is normal.
A Chicago car accident lawyer at Herbert Rosner Connelly Law Firm can take the insurance side of this off your hands while you focus on treatment. Our office sits at 65 W Jackson Blvd in the Loop, a short walk from the Daley Center, and we handle crash claims across Chicago and Cook County.
Call us today for a free case evaluation.
Our firm was built by three founding partners, Daniel Q. Herbert, Adam R. Rosner, and Thomas M. Connelly. We handle personal injury and workers' compensation claims across Chicago, and our phones are answered around the clock.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not predict what any other case will bring.
We work on a contingency fee basis, so there is no fee unless we recover money for you. We open an investigation, request the crash report, and deal with the adjusters directly so that you stop getting those calls.
Under Illinois law, a crash generally must be reported when someone is injured or killed, or when property damage exceeds $1,500. The threshold drops to $500 if an involved vehicle was required to be insured but was uninsured. Those records are published daily on the City of Chicago data portal.
Statewide, the numbers are sobering. The Illinois Department of Transportation reported that 8,124 people suffered an incapacitating injury in Illinois crashes during 2024, and it put the total estimated cost of Illinois crashes that year at $8.3 billion.
An incapacitating injury alone was estimated to cost $171,925 in 2024. That figure is a useful reality check when an adjuster opens with an offer that would not cover a single surgery.
Gaps in treatment and offhand comments in recorded statements are the two things adjusters use most often to shrink a claim.
There is no calculator that produces an honest number. Value comes from the medical picture, the wage loss, the strength of the liability evidence, and the insurance money actually available to pay.
That last point matters more than most people expect. A serious injury caused by a driver carrying minimum coverage is a different case than the same injury caused by a commercial vehicle.
Illinois allows recovery for both measurable financial losses and the human costs of an injury.
When a crash takes a life, surviving family members may bring a wrongful death claim for their own losses, including the loss of the person's society and financial support.
Usually, yes. Illinois uses modified comparative fault, and being blamed is not the same as being barred.
Under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, you are barred from recovering only if your own fault is more than 50% of the cause of your injury. At 50% or less, you still recover, but your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault.
Say your damages come to $200,000 and the jury assigns you 20% of the blame. You recover $160,000. At 51%, you recover nothing, which is exactly why adjusters start arguing percentages on the first call.
Fault percentages are decided by the trier of fact, not by an adjuster's opinion or a notation on a crash report. Photos, video, and vehicle data all fade quickly, and they are often what keeps a percentage low.
Almost every claim is paid by an insurance policy rather than by the driver personally, so finding every available policy is a core part of the work.
Illinois requires drivers to carry liability coverage of at least $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for bodily injury, plus $20,000 for property damage, under 625 ILCS 5/7-203. Serious injuries routinely exceed those limits.
When the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough, your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage may step in. This is also the coverage that responds after a hit-and-run.
These claims run on a much shorter clock, and missing it ends the case. We discuss those deadlines below.
Insurers often pay attention to the obvious injuries and quietly discount everything else. We document all of it, including:
Soft tissue injuries get the same attention. A neck injury that never fully resolves can change how you work and sleep for years.
Most Chicago collisions come down to a driver making a choice, not bad luck. The causes we see most often include:
Proving negligence means establishing four things: that the other driver owed you a duty of care, that the driver breached it, that the breach caused your injury, and that you suffered real damages.
Video is the piece that disappears fastest. Many businesses overwrite footage within days, which is one reason to involve a lawyer early.
Two years from the date of the crash, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. Once that deadline passes, the claim is gone regardless of how clear the other driver's fault was.
If a city, county, park district, or other local public entity is responsible, 745 ILCS 10/8-101 cuts that window to one year from the date of injury. Claims against the CTA carry their own one-year deadline under 70 ILCS 3605/41.
That means a crash with a city truck or a CTA bus can expire while a two-year case is still in its early stages.
You do not have to sort out fault percentages, policy limits, and filing deadlines while you are still in treatment. Let our team carry that part. The Chicago car accident lawyers at Herbert Rosner Connelly Law Firm handle these claims on a contingency fee basis, so you owe nothing unless we recover for you.
Contact our Chicago office to talk with someone about what happened and what your options are.
