Posted on December 10, 2018 in Personal Injury

For thousands of years, the only way to move around was by foot or through animal power. Now, with a few presses on a smartphone using a rideshare app, an individual can call a driver to take him/her anywhere. This convenience has revolutionized the way many people conduct their lives, but cannot remove the inherent risk that comes with traveling in a vehicle on a roadway, nor the risk of being in a car accident.

Driving is not an easy task and requires practice, skill, and awareness to avoid making bad decisions that can lead to collisions. Common sense would dictate that if a rideshare driver was at fault for an injury, the injured rider and other crash victims would seek compensation from rideshare company, as the entity who represented the driver was safe to transport passengers.

However, because of the way rideshare companies are structured, answering the question of who is legally responsible is difficult. Given the widespread use of rideshare drivers, understanding one’s legal rights in a car accident for recovery is vital, and an overview of how Illinois handles this issue will follow below.

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 Posted on December 07, 2018 in Family Law

If you are going through a divorce, your time in the courtroom is crucial in setting the tone of your case. Making a mistake in the courtroom can negatively affect your divorce and lead to a less advantageous settlement for you. Taking time to prepare before you are actually present in the courtroom will make it much less likely you make a mistake, so do your research before your time in court. These tips will help you make fewer mistakes and ensure your courtroom time goes smoothly.

Emotions and Body Language

While you are present in the courtroom, your actions will be noted. Rolling your eyes, laughing, angry outbursts, etc. will all influence the court’s perception of you and seem disrespectful. Even if you are not saying anything, body language is a good indicator of how you are feeling. If you let your body language show your emotions, even if you are extremely emotional, it will show the court that you cannot keep yourself in check, which will not be beneficial to your case.

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 Posted on December 05, 2018 in Immigration

If you are an immigrant in the United States, even if you have legal status, you must be especially careful never to be associated with crime or even the smallest mistake may be enough to render you deportable. As such, if you find yourself in criminal court or charged with an offense, it is critical to find an attorney to represent you who understands both criminal law and immigration. If your attorney is not well versed in how the two interplay, you may find yourself plea-bargained into a sentence that will render you deportable even though that may be exactly what you seek to avoid.

Crimes of Moral Turpitude and Aggravated Felonies

U.S. immigration law distinguishes two types of criminal convictions as being relevant for immigration purposes. Crimes of moral turpitude (CIMTs) are offenses that are perceived to have an element of fraud or dishonesty, such as theft, but violent crimes like murder will also count because they are so far outside the realm of ‘acceptable’ moral conduct. It can be difficult to assess whether your offense is a CIMT, however, because the term is not explicitly defined. It has been clarified through past cases, but there is a healthy amount of debate over whether many crimes do in fact count as CIMTs.

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 Posted on December 03, 2018 in Personal Injury

Safely and responsibly driving a car requires both skill and concentration. Skill is obtained with practice, but concentration often hinges of the level of alertness of the driver. Lacking either skill or concentration can result in a serious car accident that causes significant injuries. Appropriate concentration allows a driver to perceive, anticipate, and respond to hazards and other dangers on the road that could impact safe driving, and the absence of concentration is known to greatly increase the risk a driver will miss a key issue or make a bad decision. Distractions are one way in which drivers lose this attention to the road, but another one that is harder to control, and likely an issue for every driver at some point, is fatigue. Fatigue can hit a driver at any point during the day, but is most prevalent at night, when more concentration is required to make up for the lack of visibility on darkened roads.

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 Posted on November 29, 2018 in Family Law

Married couples often disagree over aspects of their lives together, such as what movie they should see, their spending habits, or the details of how to raise their children. Currently, there is also evidence that political ideology is causing more divorces than before because of the shift in the political climate of the United States. A study done by Wakefield Research, a polling research firm, examined the effect political ideology has had on marriage since the 2016 presidential election.

Breakdown of the Results

Wakefield sent out a survey to couples to ask about the effect the political climate is having on their relationship. The data they received indicated that 11% of Americans have ended a romantic relationship because they disagreed with their significant other on political ideology. Millennials were even more likely to say they ended a relationship due to politics, with 22% of millennials responding say they ended a relationship due to political affiliation.

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 Posted on November 28, 2018 in Immigration

Many people labor under the misapprehension that immigrants waiting to be admitted to the United States as citizens must all wait in one big line. In reality, there are as many types of “lines” as there are visa categories, and all of them are strictly regulated and portioned off. There are only certain amounts of people granted visas for each type of visa from each country per year, and those who are in that ‘line’ very often must wait years upon years before being granted what they asked for.

Everyone Must Wait

With rare exceptions for unusual visa categories, nearly everyone who submits an immigrant visa petition must wait for there to be available space in the quota. Grants of each visa are circumscribed by both total amount and country of origin - in other words, there might be visas left over during a specific year, but a country’s allotment may run out beforehand. Queues for employment-based visas can be long, but waits for family-based visas are by far the longest in most cases.

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 Posted on November 26, 2018 in Personal Injury

Anyone who has spent time in retail stores has seen the telltale signs that an accident happened, which is usually identified by the presence of a warning sign, orange cones, and/or ropes to cordon off an area. Often, these accidents are the result of some liquid spilling onto the floor, creating a slip and fall hazard that could endanger the safety of customers. By marking the area off, and taking steps to clean up the spill, the operators are acting responsibly and fulfilling their duty of care to keep the area open to the public free from dangerous hazards. Unfortunately, this level of attention and precaution is not employed at every store, and the result can be injured customers who slip and fall on substances present on the floor.

A woman recently sued Dollar Tree Stores Inc. after slipping and falling on a liquid substance left on the floor of an aisle during a visit to a Naperville location in April. Falling on a foreign substance while visiting a retail establishment is an all too familiar occurrence, and these companies need to be held accountable if negligence was involved. Premises liability law determines if a store owner/operator is responsible for an injury to a third party, and when it comes to a foreign substance on the floor, several factors influence whether a business may be found liable to pay compensation. An overview of how the law evaluates slip and fall cases involving foreign substances will follow below.

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 Posted on November 23, 2018 in Family Law

Each person has been happy or sad because of the weather and the changing of seasons. Each season brings different challenges with it in all aspects of life, such as bundling up for the winter or trying to stay cool in the summer. Could it be possible that divorce rates are affected by the seasons as well? Most people do not generally think of divorce as impacted by the seasons, and there are numerous reasons why a couple undertakes the divorce process. A study done at the University of Washington by Professor Julie Brines examined divorce rates to see if they were affected by the seasons at all.

The Results

The study found there are patterns where divorce rates spike at certain times of the year. The data collected over a 14 year period shows that the divorce rates peaked in March and August. March is usually right around winter is considered to end, and August often when it starts to cool down. Divorce rates spiking in March and August seems to indicate that divorce rates are affected by the seasons, but also by holidays.

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 Posted on November 21, 2018 in Immigration

Anyone who has legitimate business in the United States may enter the country, on any number of valid immigrant visas. If they wish to remain in the country, they can do so, using a procedure called adjustment of status (AOS). However, they need to meet the criteria to do so, and not everyone will be able to. Understanding what the criteria are can save you money and trouble, as you can try to correct anything that needs correcting before you take the time to file.

Am I Eligible?

Before starting to file to adjust your status, you must determine whether or not you are eligible to do so from inside the country (in addition to knowing you are eligible for a green card, to begin with, meaning that you cannot have had any past immigration trouble, among other requirements). Some people can adjust status while still in the U.S., while others must leave and go through what the State Department calls consular processing in their home country.

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 Posted on November 19, 2018 in Personal Injury

It is general knowledge that driving drunk, public intoxication, and open containers of alcohol are against the law. Of course, people do not always follow the law, and unfortunately, with alcohol, this can lead to injuries of third parties, particularly in car accidents involving drunk drivers. Once a person reaches the age of 21, alcohol is readily available from bars, restaurants, liquor stores, and other establishments that have a valid license to sell these products. Selling products that are known to lead to injuries from negligent behavior is a big responsibility, and while most are aware that a personal injury lawsuit may be filed against an intoxicated wrongdoer, many States, including Illinois, have laws that impose liability on business establishments that supply the alcohol. These laws, known as Dram Shop Laws, are in place to prevent vendors who sell liquor from providing alcohol to intoxicated persons because this practice puts the general public at risk.

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