Walsh, Knippen, Knight & Diamond, Chtd. proudly announces that after a two week jury trial, Ed Walsh and Brad Pollock received a jury verdict of $2,485,000.00 in Cook County case 00L 10323. The verdict is $1,485,000.00 in excess of the policy limit of insurance available to indemnify the defendant physician.

The insurer for the defendant doctor, Illinois State Medical Inter-Insurance Exchange, is the largest professional medical liability insurance carrier in the state of Illinois. Following the verdict, ISMIE paid its full $1,000,000.00 liability policy limit.

In order to collect the full amount of the verdict and judgment, together with interest and punitive damages, the Firm has filed a "Bad Faith" lawsuit (pdf file) against ISMIE after receiving an assignment of the claim and cause of action from the defendant doctor and his personal attorney.

The defendant doctor was suffering from incurable cancer while the lawsuit was pending; he desired to settle the case. ISMIE refused to discuss settlement of the lawsuit unless the doctor was subjected to a discovery deposition.

The doctor never had the physical or emotional strength to subject himself to a deposition and died during the pendancy of the suit. After his death, ISMIE refused to discuss settlement or offer any money in order to settle the case. The Bad Faith lawsuit is currently pending and being prosecuted in the Circuit Court of Cook County .

Ed, Brad and the Firm were privileged to represent a wonderful 43 year old man who lost total hearing in his left ear and suffers from permanent imbalance as a result of negligently performed outpatient ear surgery.

Ed, Brad and the Firm were successful in accomplishing the outstanding result in the underlying medical malpractice lawsuit for several reasons. The firm has a staff of assistants, paralegals and a legal nurse consultant expert in the prosecution of medical negligence cases. Through detailed medical research, the Firm was able to retain an extremely highly qualified ENT surgeon from the most premier ear clinic in the United States to testify as an expert witness on behalf of their client.

All of the 104 trial exhibits were used and illustrated throughout the trial by way of a PowerPoint® computer graphics presentation. Similarly, Ed illustrated the significant trial exhibits and key jury instructions by way of a PowerPoint® presentation during his closing argument. Finally, all pretrial depositions and daily trial testimony were downloaded to the attorneys' notebook computers and immediately searchable using Summation® litigation support software.