Most people who call a Chicago medical malpractice lawyer aren’t sure yet that anything went wrong. They know the outcome was bad, they know the explanations didn’t add up, and they can’t tell the difference between a known risk and a mistake. Finding that out is the work.
The Chicago personal injury lawyers at Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates have gone after doctors, hospitals, and their insurers for four generations. If you think a medical professional harmed you or someone in your family, call (800) 985-1819 to request a free consultation.
Why families choose Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates
Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates has been a family firm since 1924, and across four generations, we’ve never represented corporate interests. We’ve recovered more than $1 billion for injured Illinois people. Medical malpractice defense is its own industry, funded by insurers who litigate these cases full time and who know most firms won’t spend what it takes to see one through.
Malpractice cases are expensive before they’re worth anything. They require physician experts, years of work, and a firm willing to carry the cost with no guarantee. That’s the reason a lot of lawyers turn these cases down, and it’s the reason we’re built the way we are.
- An experienced legal team of more than 20 attorneys, so a case that takes four years doesn’t stall when one lawyer’s calendar fills.
- Trial lawyers, not case processors. Clifford Horwitz has won virtually every case he’s taken to trial, with more than 25% of his victories setting records.
- Cases other firms turned away. Many of our clients came to us after being told they had no case, or pushed to settle for a fraction of what the claim was worth.
You don’t have to be certain anything went wrong before you call. Tell us what happened, and we’ll help you find out.
What we’ve recovered in medical malpractice cases
Elise Blandin secured a $12.35 million settlement for the family of a woman whose doctors failed to diagnose her breast cancer in time. She was 37 when she died. Every case turns on its own facts, so no past result predicts another family’s.
What counts as medical malpractice in Illinois?
A bad outcome isn’t malpractice. Illinois requires three things: what the accepted standard of care was, that the provider failed to meet it, and that the failure caused your injury. Plenty of treatments carry real risks that happen even when everyone does their job right, and those aren’t cases.
The standard of care isn’t written down anywhere. Illinois defines it as the knowledge, skill, and care ordinarily used by a reasonably careful provider in the same situation, and juries are told they must decide it from expert testimony rather than from their own judgment. That’s why a physician expert has to review your records before anything else happens, and why these cases turn on medicine as much as on law.
Learn more: Can you sue for surgery complications?
What kinds of medical malpractice cases do we handle?
- Diagnostic errors: Medical errors like missed or wrong diagnoses are the largest category of serious harm in American medicine. Stroke, sepsis, and cancer are the ones we see most, and a delayed diagnosis often costs a patient the treatment window that would have saved them.
- Surgical errors: Operating on the wrong site, injuring an organ or nerve, or leaving something behind.
- Birth injuries: Oxygen deprivation, delayed C-sections, and improper use of forceps or vacuum, which can cause brain damage and cerebral palsy.
- Medication and pharmacy errors: Wrong drug, wrong dose, or a prescription filled despite a documented allergy.
- Hospital and facility failures: Understaffing, discharging a patient too soon, or keeping a provider on staff who shouldn’t be.
Who can be held responsible?
Your medical team is the starting point, rarely the whole answer.
The hospital can be liable two ways. It can be directly negligent for its own failures, like keeping a dangerous physician on staff. It can also be liable for a doctor who was never its employee. Most Illinois ER physicians are independent contractors, and hospitals might lean on that as a defense. It usually fails. If the hospital presented that care as its own and you reasonably believed the doctor worked there, it’s responsible anyway, unless you knew otherwise.
A pharmacy can be liable for dispensing the wrong drug or the wrong dose. Illinois also recognizes a narrower duty where the pharmacy has your allergies in its own records and fills a prescription it knows is contraindicated for you. Outside of that, Illinois generally puts the duty to warn on the prescribing physician.
What has to happen before a malpractice case can be filed?
Illinois requires something no other injury claim does. Before your complaint is filed, your attorney has to attach a sworn affidavit stating that a qualified health professional reviewed your records and found a reasonable and meritorious basis for the case, along with that reviewer’s written report. A separate affidavit is required for every defendant. Filing without one is grounds for dismissal.
That requirement is why a malpractice firm can’t tell you on the phone whether you have a case. Someone with the right credentials has to read the chart first, and we pay for that review.
What compensation can you recover?
Illinois places no cap on medical malpractice damages. Lawmakers capped non-economic damages in 2005, the Illinois Supreme Court struck that cap down in 2010, and nothing has replaced it. What a jury awards depends on the evidence in your case.
An Illinois medical malpractice claim can recover:
- Past medical costs. Treatment you’ve already needed because of the error.
- Future medical costs. Care, therapy, equipment, and long-term care you’ll need going forward.
- Lost earnings. Wages you’ve already lost, plus your reduced ability to earn in the future.
- Pain and suffering. Physical pain and emotional harm.
- Disfigurement. Visible scarring or permanent physical change.
- Loss of a normal life. Illinois’s term for a diminished ability to enjoy your life.
When malpractice causes a death, the family can bring two claims at once. A wrongful death claim covers what the surviving family lost. A survival claim covers what the patient went through before they died.
Two things Illinois does not allow:
- Punitive damages. Illinois law bars them in every medical malpractice case.
- Multiplier formulas. No Illinois rule multiplies your medical bills to produce a number. Juries are instructed to award what fairly compensates you based on the evidence. If someone quotes you a multiple of your bills, they’re describing how insurance adjusters value claims, not how Illinois juries decide them.
How long do you have to file a medical malpractice claim in Illinois?
You have two years from when you knew or reasonably should have known you were injured, and a hard outer limit of four years from the date of the treatment itself. That second deadline is the one that ends cases. It runs from the act, not from your discovery of it, so a surgical error you couldn’t have known about can expire before you ever learn it happened.
Children get longer. A claim for someone injured before age 18 can be brought within eight years of the act, but never after that person’s 22nd birthday.
Where you were treated changes the rules more than most people expect. A claim involving a Veterans Affairs hospital goes through a federal administrative process first and ends up in federal court with no jury. Care at a state facility like the University of Illinois Hospital goes to the Illinois Court of Claims, on its own jurisdictional deadline. Cases against private hospitals and physicians are filed in the Law Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Tell us where you were treated early, because it determines the deadline.
What should you do if you think a doctor harmed you?
Request your complete medical records now, not the discharge summary. You have a federal right to them, and the full chart includes the nursing notes, imaging, and orders that a summary leaves out. Ask for a second opinion from a provider outside that hospital system, because a doctor reviewing a colleague’s work inside the same institution is in an awkward position and you’ll get a straighter answer elsewhere.
Keep getting treatment, and don’t let a fear of the lawsuit interrupt your care. Gaps in treatment get used against patients later, and your health matters more than the case does. Then call a lawyer before you sign anything the hospital sends you, because incident reports and settlement paperwork are drafted by people who work for the other side.
Frequently asked questions about medical malpractice in Chicago
How do I know if I have a case?
You probably can’t know on your own, and that’s the honest answer. Illinois requires a qualified physician to review your records before a case can be filed, so the review is the answer to the question. What we can tell you quickly is whether your situation is worth reviewing, which usually comes down to how serious the harm was and whether the timeline suggests something was missed.
Will suing affect my ongoing medical care?
You can keep seeing the providers you trust, and a hospital can’t refuse you emergency care because of a lawsuit. Many patients do move their routine care to a different system while a case is pending, mostly for their own comfort. If your treatment is complex or hard to transfer, tell us, because it’s something we plan around rather than something that should stop you.
Why do these cases take so long?
Three to five years is common, and the length is mostly the medicine. Records have to be gathered and read by experts, depositions have to be scheduled around physicians’ schedules, and the defense has its own experts and its own timeline. Most cases resolve before trial, though the ones that resolve well are usually the ones prepared as though they won’t.
What does a medical malpractice lawyer cost?
Nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee, so our fee comes out of what we recover, and you owe us nothing if we don’t win. The expert reviews and case expenses these claims require run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and we advance those. Learn more about what it costs to sue a hospital.
Talk to a Chicago medical malpractice attorney
If something happened to you or your family that nobody has adequately explained, you’re entitled to an answer, whether or not it turns into a case. We’ll review the records, put them in front of a physician who can tell us what should have happened, and tell you straight what we find.
Call Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates at (800) 985-1819 or reach out online to request a free consultation.
