If a doctor, nurse, or hospital in Chicago injured you through a preventable error, you may be able to recover compensation for your medical bills, lost income, and lasting harm. Illinois generally gives you two years from the date you knew or should have known about the injury, and your lawsuit must be filed alongside a written report from a qualified medical professional confirming the claim has merit. That second requirement is why valid cases are sometimes lost on procedure rather than facts.
A Chicago medical malpractice lawyer at Herbert Rosner Connelly Law Firm can obtain your records, arrange that medical review, and tell you plainly whether you have a claim worth pursuing. Call us today for a free consultation.
Our firm secured an $8.1 million settlement against a Chicago hospital in a case involving medical negligence. That is the kind of claim this page is about.
Herbert Rosner Connelly is led by three founding partners, Daniel Q. Herbert, Adam R. Rosner, and Thomas M. Connelly, working from our office at 65 W Jackson Blvd in downtown Chicago. We represent injured patients and grieving families across the city, and our team is available 24/7.
Your consultation is free and carries no obligation. We will tell you if the records do not support a claim, and if they do, we build the case with the medical experts an Illinois malpractice action requires.
No agency publishes a count of malpractice injuries specific to Chicago, which is itself worth understanding before you compare your situation to a statistic.
The federal National Practitioner Data Bank, run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the closest thing to a national ledger. Its public data shows the following:
The practical takeaway is that the volume of malpractice in your neighborhood tells you nothing about your own claim. What matters is what your records show.
Operating on the wrong site, leaving an instrument or sponge behind, damaging an adjacent organ, or mismanaging sedation. These cases often turn on the operative report and the anesthesia record rather than on what anyone remembers.
A missed heart attack, a cancer read as benign, an infection sent home from the emergency department. The injury here is usually the treatment you did not get in time, which makes the timeline of imaging and lab results central.
Failure to monitor fetal distress, delayed cesarean delivery, or improper use of delivery instruments. These claims involve lifetime care costs and require experts in both obstetrics and pediatric neurology.
Wrong drug, wrong dose, a known allergy overlooked, or a pressure injury that developed because a patient was not turned. Hospital charting and medication administration records carry most of the proof.
There is no formula, and any lawyer who gives you a number before reading your chart is guessing.
Value depends on how severe and how permanent the injury is, what future medical care you will need, how much income you have lost and will lose, and whether the negligence is clear enough that the defense sees real exposure at trial.
One factor works in your favor in this state: Illinois does not cap what a jury may award in a medical malpractice case. The Illinois Supreme Court struck down statutory limits on non-economic damages in 2010, so there is no ceiling written into the law on compensation for pain, disfigurement, or loss of a normal life.
We can walk you through the specific drivers in your situation once we have read your chart, and we will be straight with you if the numbers do not justify a lawsuit.
Past and future medical treatment, surgeries and rehabilitation, in-home or long-term care, assistive equipment, lost wages, and reduced earning capacity when the injury changes what you can do for a living.
Pain and suffering, emotional distress, disfigurement, disability, and loss of a normal life. A spouse may also claim loss of consortium.
When malpractice causes a death, Illinois law allows surviving family members to seek compensation for their loss, including grief, sorrow, and the financial support the person provided. A separate survival claim can recover for what your loved one endured before death. Our attorneys pursue the wrongful death claim and the survival claim together when both apply.
Often, yes.
Hospitals and their insurers routinely argue that a patient missed appointments, ignored discharge instructions, delayed reporting symptoms, or failed to disclose part of their history.
Illinois follows a modified comparative fault under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116. If your share of the fault is more than 50%, you recover nothing. If it is 50% or less, you can still recover, with your damages reduced in proportion to your share.
So a blame argument is not the end of your claim. It is a fight over percentages, and it is one we prepare for from the first review of your records.
Insurers tend to concede the obvious harm and contest everything downstream from it.
We document the full picture instead: the second surgery that became necessary, the job you cannot return to, the care a family member now provides unpaid, and the treatment you will still need in ten years.
That documentation is built with treating physicians, life care planners, and economists, and it is what gives a demand its weight.
Most claims we see trace back to a system failure rather than a single careless act:
A bad outcome is not malpractice. Proving a claim means establishing four things:
Causation is usually the hardest of the four, because the defense will argue you were already sick.
Illinois does not let a malpractice case start on an allegation alone. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-622, your attorney must file an affidavit with the complaint, attaching a written report from a qualified health professional who has reviewed the records and found reasonable and meritorious cause for the lawsuit.
That review takes time to arrange, and a defective affidavit can put a case at risk of dismissal. It is the single strongest reason not to wait until your deadline is close before calling a lawyer.
Responsibility rarely stops with one person. Depending on what your records show, a claim may be brought against the treating physician, a surgeon or anesthesiologist, nurses, a radiologist or pathologist who read a study, a pharmacist, or the hospital or clinic itself.
Hospitals can also be liable for their own institutional failures, such as inadequate staffing or allowing an unqualified provider to treat patients.
Identifying every potentially responsible party early matters, because each one may carry separate insurance coverage.
Under 735 ILCS 5/13-212, a malpractice action against a physician, dentist, nurse, or hospital must be brought within two years of the date you knew, should have known, or received written notice of the injury.
An outer limit applies regardless of when you discovered the harm: no case may be brought more than four years after the act or omission that caused it.
Illinois provides longer filing periods for children injured by medical negligence, and claims arising from a death follow their own timing rules. Because these exceptions are narrow and fact-specific, have an attorney confirm your actual deadline rather than assuming an extension applies.
If you believe a Chicago provider's error caused your injury or your loved one's death, the most useful next step is a free case review. Herbert Rosner Connelly Law Firm will obtain and read the records, arrange the medical review Illinois requires, and give you an honest assessment of where you stand.
Call a Chicago medical malpractice lawyer, or schedule a free consultation online. There is no fee to speak with us, and no obligation to hire us.
