Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers — Felicetti Law Firm, Illinois

Chicago concentrates every kind of traffic conflict into a few square miles — the Kennedy and Dan Ryan feeding the Loop, CTA buses and trains sharing streets with cyclists and delivery vans, a downtown grid that empties and refills twice a day, and five months of the year when ice decides how quickly anything can stop.

The Wacker Drive Office

Two Years — Unless You Are Suing the City

The ordinary Illinois deadline for a personal injury action is two years from accrual (735 ILCS 5/13-202).

Against a local public entity — the City of Chicago, the CTA, a park district, a school district, a county — the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act cuts that to one year (745 ILCS 10/8-101). Claims against the State of Illinois itself go to the Illinois Court of Claims rather than the circuit court, on its own filing rules.

A CTA bus and a private coach are the same vehicle to a passenger and a different case entirely to a lawyer. The one-year period is the reason Chicago transit and municipal claims should be assessed in weeks rather than months.

At Exactly Fifty Percent, an Illinois Plaintiff Still Recovers

Illinois applies modified comparative negligence under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116. Recovery is barred only where the plaintiff is more than fifty percent of the proximate cause of the injury. A plaintiff assessed at exactly fifty percent recovers half of their damages.

The distinction between “more than 50%” and “50% or more” sounds pedantic until a jury returns an even split, at which point it is the whole case. Illinois sits on the recovering side of that line.

Illinois Does Not Cap What a Jury May Award

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state’s damages caps as unconstitutional in Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in 2010, and they have not returned. There is no statutory ceiling on compensatory damages in an Illinois personal injury or medical negligence case.

Pages claiming Illinois limits pain and suffering are recycling pre-2010 material. The limit in an Illinois case is the evidence, and sometimes the defendant’s available insurance — never a statute.

Dram Shop Claims Expire in One Year, Not Two

Where an over-served driver caused the crash, the Illinois Dram Shop Act (235 ILCS 5/6-21) can create a claim against the establishment that served them. That claim carries its own one-year deadline and its own statutory damage limits, which the State adjusts for inflation and republishes every January — so any fixed figure quoted online is likely to be a year out of date.

Because the dram shop clock runs a year shorter than the underlying injury claim, a drunk-driving case that is still comfortably within time against the driver may already be too late against the bar.

What the Chicago Office Handles

The firm covers Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will and Kane counties and takes Illinois claims downstate as well — Rockford, Peoria, Springfield, Champaign and the Metro East. Matters include car and expressway collisions, semi-trailer crashes on the I-80 and I-55 freight corridors, motorcycle cases, cyclist and pedestrian injuries, rideshare collisions, slip, trip and fall claims including winter ice cases, construction accidents, workers’ compensation and wrongful death.

Free Consultation for Chicago-Area Injuries

If a city, transit or county vehicle was involved, treat the deadline as one year and get the claim looked at now. Call (800) 333-1988 at any hour or contact the firm online. Reviews are free, and the fee is contingent on a recovery.

Call (800) 333-1988 — Free Illinois Case Review

Felicetti also represents clients in: Missouri · Colorado · Texas · New Jersey

Illinois deadlines and fault rules are summarised generally and have exceptions. This is not legal advice and creates no attorney-client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Illinois matters are handled by attorneys licensed in Illinois.