Chicago personal injury attorney
Finding a Chicago attorney? or law firm by area of law. Contact a Chicago Illinois (IL) lawyer by phone, fax, or email here is one
J. Wesley Mitchell
Attorney J. Wesley Mitchell was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1990 and is a founding partner of the Chicago law firm of Mitchell, Hoffman & Wolf, LLC. Mr. Mitchell received his B.S. from Indiana State University and his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law. He concentrates his practice in plaintiff's personal injury matters including medical malpractice, automobile accidents and injuries, wrongful death and construction accidents. He has written chapters for the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education's handbooks "Proving and Disproving Damages in Personal Injury Cases" and "Illinois Civil Discovery Practice" and its former handbook "Illinois Structural Work Act Practice." He is a member of the Illinois State Bar Association and the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association.
email: jwmitchell@mitchellhoffmanwolf.com
Note: This post is from http://www.mitchellhoffmanwolf.com and Tricks-4-fre
Clarence Darrow - a Famous attorney
CLARENCE DARROW
Clarence Darrow was easily the most famous lawyer in America in the Twentieth Century. He practiced law in Ashtabula County from 1878 to 1887. His most famous trials have been dramatized on stage and screen. The Scopes A Monkey Trial became Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy as the Clarence Darrow character. The Leopold and Loeb trial was dramatized as Compulsion and was a stage play before being made into a film. Darrow has been played on stage and screen by some of America's most famous actors, such as Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Paul Muni, and Edward Asner.Darrow was born in 1857 in Kinsman, Trumbull County, Ohio, the son of Amirus and Emily Darrow. His parents were drawn to each other by their shared love of learning and independent thought. Amirus Darrow was an ardent abolitionist and Emily Darrow an early supporter of female suffrage and a woman's rights advocate. Amirus Darrow was expelled from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and later continued his studies at a Unitarian Theological College.
Amirus Darrow was a known supporter of the abolitionist, John Brown. Brown mustered his men for the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, in the Andover area, only a few miles from the Darrow home in Kinsman. Clearly, his parents had a great influence on Clarence Darrow, who in his later life, as a social activist, would be a champion of minorities, representing the NAACP, and organized labor.
Clarence Darrow attended Allegheny College but left after one year and taught school. He showed an interest in the study of law and, thereafter, attended law school at the University of Michigan for one year. Michigan had a two year law program at that time. He did not show great promise as a law student and he returned home. He then began studying law in the office of a lawyer whose name is lost to history. He appeared before a committee of the bar in Youngstown, Ohio, and gained admission to the practice of law in 1878. Darrow felt that Youngstown, population 20,000, was too big for him and he decided to practice law in the small village of Andover, a farming community about fifteen miles from his boyhood home in Kinsman. His early law practice involved disputes over horse trades, boundary lines, actions in replevin, tort, and an occasional criminal complaint. It seems that many of the criminal cases involved either the sale of liquor or the watering of milk. The liquor cases often involved farmers selling hard cider or adding water to their milk in order to increase the volume for sale.
Darrow married Jessie Ohl, who was the daughter of a prosperous family in the Kinsman area. His father-in-law loaned him the money to purchase his law books and Darrow and his wife lived in a small apartment over a shoe store, which also doubled as his law office. He found that he made less as a lawyer than he made as a school teacher. He briefly shared his practice with a young lawyer named James Roberts. Roberts stole Darrow's law books and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Shortly thereafter, Darrow associated with another lawyer, J.S. Morley, and moved to more impressive quarters in Andover.
In those days being an orator was considered essential to a successful lawyer. Darrow gave the Memorial Day address in Andover in 1883 and 1884. He also became involved in politics and was secretary of the Ashtabula County Democratic Convention and was elected as a district delegate. He was an ardent free trader and supported Grover Cleveland's campaign for election in 1884. His own tries for political office met with mixed results. In 1885, he ran for the State Senate and was defeated. In 1886, he ran for Ashtabula County Prosecutor and again was defeated.
He soon found his ambitions exceeded the small town of Andover and he decided to relocate his law practice to Ashtabula, which was then a city of 5,000 people. He was elected City Solicitor, which paid $75.00 per month and allowed him enough free time to take cases on the side. While serving as Ashtabula City Solicitor, he shared cases with another lawyer whose name was Charles Lawyer, Jr. Charles Lawyer was the son of a physician in the Andover area. Both Darrow and Lawyer started their legal careers in Andover and when Darrow left for Ashtabula, Lawyer moved to Jefferson. Lawyer later went on to a successful political career, being elected Ashtabula County Prosecutor and State Senator. Darrow defended indigent defendants and was paid $32.50 for his services. In one celebrated divorce case, Darrow's client, the wife, had sued her husband for divorce on the grounds of gross neglect and extreme cruelty and nearly one hundred witnesses testified. The wife received alimony in the sum of $1,200.00.
Darrow was a passionate man and did not believe in dispassionate advocacy. As he said AI have unconsciously and perhaps consciously tried to make life worthwhile by seeking to workout my strongest emotions. His best known Ohio case, Brockway vs. Jewell, 52 Ohio 187 (1894), was an example of his principles over his pocketbook and involved an action to recover a harness with gilt trimmings with a value of $25.00. The case involved the alcoholic son of a prosperous family, who failed to pay for a harness that he promised to a boy, Darrows client, who had looked after the man when he was ill. The case was first tried before a Justice of the Peace, where Darrow lost and an appeal was taken to the Court of Common Pleas with a jury trial. Darrow won the jury trial but it was appealed and reversed, tried again before the JP Court and then appealed to the Common Pleas Court where Darrow won the second jury trial. Darrow was successful in an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, however, eight years had elapsed from the time of the first trial in JP Court to his success in the Ohio Supreme Court. By that time, Darrow had moved to Chicago but he came back to argue his case before the Supreme Court. It appears that Darrow had been paid a total of $5.00 by his client and underwrote the costs of the subsequent trials and appeals out of his own pocket.
While in Ashtabula, Darrow became friends with Amos Hubbard, the cashier with the Farmers National Bank, and who advised him to read Henry George's Progress and Poverty, which had an enormous influence on Darrow. Darrow credited Hubbard with giving him insight into the radical political doctrines of the day. Judge Richards of the Ashtabula Police Court brought Darrow's attention to a book by John Peter Altgeld of Chicago, Illinois, who wrote Our Penal Machinery and its Victim. Altgeld was considered one of the Progressives and free thinkers of his time. Later, Darrow would meet him and come under his influence when he moved to Chicago.
As a Democrat in Republican Ashtabula County, Darrow was in the minority. However, his fame as a speaker caused him to be invited to speak on topics of the day. On October 3, 1884, he addressed a packed house at Smith's Opera House in Ashtabula, where he debated the free trade policies of Grover Cleveland verses the protectionist policies of the Republican party. Despite being an ardent Democrat, one of Darrow's early patrons was Judge Laban Sherman who, although a Republican, used his influence in helping Darrow secure his position as Ashtabula City Solicitor.
Most of the cases tried by the lawyers in those days were before Justices of the Peace. He described the trials as being filled with color, life and wits. People took sides between the contending parties and their lawyers. Darrow described neighborhoods, churches, lodges, and entire communities divided over lawsuits as if in war. Sometimes the cases were tried in town halls as the office the Justice of the Peace was not large enough to accommodate the interested spectators.
In Ashtabula, Darrow indulged in his passion of poker, finding a game in progress almost anytime, day or night. Darrow described the poker games as follows: AWith congenial companions, a deck of cards and a box of chips, and a little something to drink, I could forget the rest of the world until the last white bone had been tossed into the yawning jack pot.
But his favorite sport was baseball and he loved to play until age and infirmities caught up with him. One of the great moments of his life was hitting a home run for the Kinsman Town Team and winning the game.
Darrow left Ashtabula for Chicago in 1887. He said he became angry when the sale of a house from a local dentist failed to go through because the dentist's wife felt that Darrow would not be able to pay the $3,500.00 purchase price, although Darrow had made a $500.00 down payment. She felt he'd never earn enough to pay the balance due. At that point, Darrow supposedly declared he didn't want the house anyway, because he was going to move away. Shortly thereafter, he made his move to Chicago and later became associated with many of the progressive thinkers of that era. His talent as an orator, sharpened in debates in Ashtabula, was recognized as he took part in the various debating associations and discussion groups in Chicago. At the urging of his now mentor, Altgeld, he became Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago. In just a short time, Darrow had gone from being Ashtabula City Solicitor to Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago, and thus setting the stage for his brilliant legal career.
Even though he represented the railroads, his heart belonged to the downtrodden and the social outcasts. Darrow was initially involved in another landmark case of the twentieth century, the Scotsboro Boys: five black teenagers who were accused of raping two white girls in Alabama. It was feared that Darrow's well known atheism would pose a problem to the defense. Disputes concerning who would control the defense of the Scotsboro Boys caused Darrow, who was seventy-five years old at the time, to get out of the case.
Clarence Darrow died on March 13, 1938, and his memorial service was held at the chapel at the University of Chicago. It is ironic that his eulogy was delivered by a close friend, Judge Holly, who read the text of the same eulogy Darrow had given forty years earlier at the death of Darrow's patron, John Altgeld.
Of his eighty years on this earth, Clarence Darrow spent ten of them practicing law in Ashtabula County. It was here where he developed his oratorical skills. He decided not to be just another conservative country lawyer and moved on to Chicago, where he gained fame in some of the famous trials in American history. While there have been other famous cases and famous lawyers since Clarence Darrow, no one has occupied the prominent role that he played on the legal stage as a lawyer and social activist.
Author: JUDGE ALFRED W. MACKEY
Ashtabula County Court of Common Pleas
August 17, 2001
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The greatest lawyers in all time
Marcus Tullius Cicero
106-43BC
A lawyer widely respected for his philosophical writing, understanding of Greek philosophy and the structure that his analyses gave to Roman law. He viewed justice as the highest human virtue, and his work is a cornucopia of percipient observations about law. He was murdered as an opponent of Octavian.
Domitius Ulpianus
AD160-228
An outstandingly thoughtful jurist and prolific writer whose influence upon the theory and practice of law has been extensive. He forged the systematisation of rules, and the exposition of legal principles, in a way that has since shaped the law of more than 60 countries. When the Emperor Justinian published the unprecedented Digest of Roman Law in AD533, one third of it was extracts from Ulpianus’ work.
Sir Thomas More
1477-1535
A barrister of Lincoln’s Inn in the 16th century, and later Lord Chancellor. A very successful commercial lawyer, and legal writer. Perhaps best known for writing Utopia (Greek for nowhere) a marvellous book depicting a society that rules itself by reason, and in which there are no lawyers!
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865
The son of impoverished pioneers, and largely self-educated, he qualified as a lawyer and went on to become the 16th president of the United States. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in areas under the control of the southern Confederate states. On November 19, 1863 he gave what became known as the Gettysburg Address. It is one of the most quoted speeches in human history. It invokes in an inspiring way the principle of human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence, opening with the words: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. It ends with the assertion that in a new America “. . . government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".
Louis Dembitz Brandeis
1856-1941
Deeply concerned with issues of social justice, and the originator of what became a ubiquitous form of legal argument, the “Brandeis brief”. In a US Supreme Court case in 1907 about a state statute, Brandeis, who later became a Supreme Court judge, innovated a form of legislative interpretation by introducing social study reports to assist the court in construing the law.
Clarence Darrow
1857-1938
Celebrated American defence lawyer and formidable orator, committed to defending freedom of expression and opposing the death penalty. He defended war protesters charged with having violated sedition laws, and in 1925 defended John Scopes, a high school teacher who had broken state law by presenting the Darwinian theory of evolution. In 1926 he won an acquittal for a black family, that of Dr Ossian Sweet, who had resisted a savage racist mob trying to expel it from a white district in Detroit.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1869-1948
The world-famous advocate of non-violent social reform qualified as a barrister and joined Inner Temple, London. His practice flowered in South Africa and became more socially angled after he was asked to take off his turban in court. He refused. He was later imprisoned in South Africa and India for his activities. A superb exponent of the arts of negotiation and mediation.
William Henry Thompson
1885-1947
A solicitor from Preston, Lancashire, who qualified in 1908, was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, and became the country’s leading expert on working people’s compensation. A supporter of the suffragettes and co-founder of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), he established a law firm in 1921 to act for workers. Today, Thompsons is the largest personal injury and employment rights firm in the UK with 50,000 cases being run at any time.
Lord Denning of Whitchurch
1899-1999
A man of monumental influence on the development of English law, both in its substance and style. His time at Oxford as a mathematical scholar was followed by legal study, and then a highly successful career as a barrister. During his forty years as a judge he reformed many areas of English law including the law of contract, of unmarried partners, and of judicial review. Not, though, an unblemished record of greatness as his views on racial issues were somewhat contentious.
Nelson Mandela
1918 -
A Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former President of South Africa who has helped to shape modern history. He was the only black student in his law faculty. He set up his own practice in 1952 and acted for clients who were victims of apartheid. He insisted on using the “whites only” entrance to courts, and campaigned relentlessly for an end to apartheid. He successfully resisted an attempt by the Transvaal Law Society to have him struck off the rolls of attorneys.
Helena Kennedy, QC
1950 -
Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, ennobled in 1997, was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1972 and took silk in 1991. Her juridical prowess has been combined with a breathtaking range of book writing, and legal campaigning on behalf of women, children, crime victims and other groups. The benefits of her technical legal accomplishments ramify into many areas through work as varied as being chairwoman of the British Council, and chairwoman of the Human Genetics Commission. Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University
Levin & Perconti
Levin & Perconti
History
Levin & Perconti was established in 1992 by original founding partners Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti. Since then, Levin & Perconti has grown to twelve attorneys. According to their website , Levin & Perconti has emerged as a pioneer in the litigation of nursing home abuse and neglect by achieving record
verdicts and settlements for its clients, handling cases that have gained national attention, and by promoting better nursing home practices and stricter regulations for the care of the elderly and disabled. Since 2001, Levin & Perconti has offices in the historic Reid, Murdoch & Co. Building.
Notable cases
Sued Woodstock Residence Nursing Home on behalf of one patient who died as the possible result of a morphine overdose. The Illinois Department of Public Health found six mysterious deaths at the home and two employess face criminal charges. $3 million awarded on behalf of woman who choked to death at a nursing home when her trachea tube got clogged. $7.62 million verdict against an HMO doctor who ignored a mother's complaints of postpartum bleeding, resulting in her bleeding to death. $10 million settlement on behalf of a 5-year-old boy who, while playing in an open fire hydrant, was struck by a City of Chicago Fire Department truck and ultimately lost his leg and half of his pelvis. $14 million verdict on behalf of a patient who's diagnosis of lung cancer was delayed after doctors ignored abnormal chest x-ray results.
Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levin_%26_Perconti
Property of Wikipedia
Tricks-4-free is not claiming this content and this post is just intended to read more on Wikipedia
What is law?
according to Wikipedia Law is:
Law is a system of rules and guidelines, usually enforced through a set of institutions. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets. Property law defines rights and
obligations related to the transfer and title of personal (often referred to as chattel) and real property. Trust law applies to assets held for investment and financial security, while tort law allows claims for compensation if a person's rights or property are harmed. If the harm is criminalised in a statute, criminal law offers means by which the state can prosecute the perpetrator. Constitutional law provides a framework for the creation of law, the protection of human rights and the election of political representatives. Administrative law is used to review the decisions of government agencies, while international law governs affairs between Sovereign States in activities ranging from trade to environmental regulation or military action. Writing in 350 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle declared, "The rule of law is better than the rule of any individual." Legal systems elaborate rights and responsibilities in a variety of ways. A general distinction can be made between civil law jurisdictions, which codify their laws, and common law systems, where judge made law is not consolidated. In some countries, religion informs the law. Law provides a rich source of scholarly inquiry, into legal history, philosophy, economic analysis or sociology. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness and justice. "In its majestic equality", said the author Anatole France in 1894, "the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." In a typical democracy, the central institutions for interpreting and creating law are the three main branches of government, namely an impartial judiciary, a democratic legislature, and an accountable executive. To implement and enforce the law and provide services to the public, a government's bureaucracy, the military and police are vital. While all these organs of the state are creatures created and bound by law, an independent legal profession and a vibrant civil society inform and support their progress.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law
What is a Lawyer?
According to wikipedia a lawyer is:
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as a attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law."Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political and social authority, and deliver justice. Working as a lawyer involves the practical application of abstract legal theories and knowledge to solve specific individualized problems, or to advance the interests of those who retain (i.e., hire) lawyers to perform legal services. The role of the lawyer varies significantly across legal jurisdictions, and so it can be treated here in only the most general terms. More information is available in country-specific articles
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawyer
