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SEE THESE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Accident victims are entitled to recover monetary damages for all losses and expenses suffered from the accident. Depending upon the particular circumstances of your case, damages may include recovery for any of the following:
- Medical bills
- Lost Wages, including overtime
- Pain and Suffering
- Physical Disability
- Disfigurement
- Emotional Trauma
- Mental Disability
- Property Damage
Personal Injury is any physical or mental injury to a person that results from another person’s negligence or harmful act. Personal Injury involves civil law cases as opposed to criminal law cases which involve a defendant and the State of Washington. Personal injury can occur in a wide variety of ways. The following are some of the most common:
- Auto Accidents
- Animal Attacks
- Insurance Bad Faith
- Insurance Fair Claims Act violations
- Slip and Fall Accidents/Premise Liability
If you’ve received a ticket for a DUI involving marijuana, the odds are pretty good that the police asked you to submit to a chemical test. In order to be relevant, the test has to be administered as soon as possible after you were pulled over. Police can’t administer roadside blood tests, so the tests for the presence of marijuana are typically done in a hospital setting. Under the current laws in the state of Illinois (this was written in 2020), drivers face repercussions from the Secretary of State if the concentration of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) exceeds 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood (or 10 nanograms per milliliter of another bodily substance).
Of course, Illinois is an “implied consent” state, meaning that if you refuse to take part in any requested testing your license will automatically be suspended, regardless of what the outcome of the test would have been.
In short, no. Marijuana is legal in Illinois, but driving under the influence of marijuana remains illegal. If the concentration of THC in your blood is over 5 nanograms per milliliter (or 10 nanograms per milliliter of another bodily substance) you can still be charged with driving under the influence of a drug in Illinois.
Our firm has a tremendous amount of respect for the work done by public defenders around the country and in Illinois. In fact, our attorneys work as part-time public defenders for Kankakee County, mostly on serious felony cases for individuals who can’t otherwise afford legal representation. Public defenders are, by and large, great attorneys who know their jobs well and fight hard for their clients. If you’ve been charged with a crime, however, there are a few things a private attorney can offer that a public defender might not be able to.
- Interdisciplinary approach. The attorneys at Lawson & O’Brien take a holistic approach to every criminal case. That means we work hard to minimize the impacts of criminal charges not just on your criminal history, but also on your employment, your family, and your driver’s license. For example, if a client is charged with a DUI the public defender’s office will not fight the accompanying license suspension.
Our office can and will analyze your arrest to determine whether we can file a Petition to Revoke the Statutory Summary Suspension that comes with almost all DUIs. We also try to seek solutions that reduce or even eliminate the impact of having a criminal charge on your job, whether that means scheduling court dates in a way that allows you to attend without missing work or negotiating plea agreements that won’t cause problems during interviews or background checks. If you have a pending divorce or civil suit, things can get very complicated very quickly. We’ll help you navigate the complexities of the legal system and we’ll work to create a single legal strategy that will best serve multiple cases.
- Personal attention. Public defenders have, on average, a very high case load. That means your case will be one in a long list of cases a public defender works on. They may not have time to provide you with regular updates or even meet with you more than the time it takes to make sure you understand the basic facts of your case. At Lawson & O’Brien we make it a priority to make sure you feel informed and empowered throughout the process. Criminal charges and the entire criminal justice system can feel extremely overwhelming and confusing, which makes it frustrating and difficult to make the kinds of tough decisions required to navigate a criminal charge. We’ll help you cut through all that. What does a “good” plea agreement look like? What are my odds at trial? What does it mean to take a conviction? What will the impact be on my job? These are all often very case-specific questions that we can help you answer.
Preparation. Public defenders are, by and large, very good lawyers, and that means they’ll probably be ready to try your case. But very few will take the time to work with you as closely as we can to make sure you feel prepared for your case. The last thing you want in court is to feel surprised or taken advantage of, and that comes down to talking through your options, understanding the system, and knowing what’s coming before it happens. At Lawson & O’Brien, we’ll work hard with you to make sure you don’t walk into any criminal proceeding blind.
The short answer is: probably. In Illinois, a parenting plan that has been signed by a judge has the full force and effect of a court order, meaning that both parties are obligated to follow it. Court orders aren’t enforced in the same way that most laws are–there are no “court police” who track whether each order is being followed. If a court order is violated, nothing happens unless and until someone files a “Petition for Rule to Show Cause,” which is a court filing used by a person to say that an order isn’t being followed.
If you and your spouse have agreed together not to follow a court order, there will be no consequences unless someone files a Petition for Rule to Show Cause, in which case you will have to appear before a judge to explain that either a) the order was not valid, b) the order did not apply to you for some reason, or c) you had some good cause for violating the order. That means that, in practice, you and your spouse can agree to any modifications you can mutually come up with, so long as you’re both on board and on the same page. Be careful, however–the courthouse is filled with stories of people who thought they had an agreed change to an order only to find out that the other person wasn’t really in agreement. That’s why having any changes in writing is generally a very good idea.
Parenting plans can be complicated and lengthy documents. The lives of the families and children to which they apply are often even more complicated. Ideally, the parenting plan will be a long-term document, meaning it won’t need to be modified very often. It is therefore impossible to predict all the possible scenarios to which a parenting plan will apply. Last-minute cancellations, moved appointments, unexpected medical care–all of these are common situations in which the parenting plan might have to be temporarily set aside. If you and your child’s parent can agree on these changes, nobody needs to file a Petition for Rule to Show Cause. If, however, changes are being made unilaterally and without permission, you should consider whether you need to file a Petition for Rule to Show Cause to enforce your rights under the parenting plan. To avoid having one filed against you, too, you should do your best to continue to follow the court’s orders as laid out in the parenting plan. If your child’s parent makes that impossible, document your attempts to follow the court’s orders and contact an attorney as soon as possible.
