What Jeff handles — and what each kind of case turns on.

The largest share of the work, and the case type where the outcome is decided earliest. Liability in a rear-end or a failure-to-yield collision is usually established in the first pages of the crash report, which means the fight moves quickly to the two things insurers actually control: how much of the injury they will accept as caused by the crash, and how much coverage they admit exists.

Both states reduce recovery by the injured person's share of fault and bar it entirely above 50%, so a disputed-fault case — a left turn across traffic, a lane change on an interstate, a multi-vehicle chain reaction — is worth developing with photographs, scene measurements, vehicle data, and independent witnesses rather than conceding the adjuster's percentages.

State minimum liability limits are low in both states: $25,000 per person in Illinois and Indiana alike. A single serious injury can exhaust that in the emergency room, which makes finding every additional policy — the other driver's umbrella, an employer's vehicle coverage, a resident relative's policy, and your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage — a central part of the work rather than a footnote.

A commercial vehicle case is not a bigger car case. Interstate carriers operate under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which govern hours of service, driver qualification, inspection and maintenance, and drug and alcohol testing — and which generate records that either prove the carrier was running a safe operation or prove it was not.

The evidence that decides these cases lives with the defendant and is retained only for limited periods: electronic logging device data, engine control module downloads, dispatch and trip records, driver qualification files, maintenance histories, and post-crash testing. A spoliation and preservation demand has to go out before those retention windows close, which is usually a matter of weeks rather than months.

Illinois and Indiana sit at the center of the national freight network — the Borman, the Toll Road, I-80/94, I-65, I-70, I-55, I-57, I-74 and the intermodal corridors around Chicago and Indianapolis. Carriers defend these claims with counsel retained within days of the crash, so the injured side cannot afford to spend the first month deciding whether to make a call.

Motorcycle claims combine the most severe injuries with the most hostile liability environment. The injuries — open fractures, road rash requiring grafting, degloving, traumatic brain injury — are catastrophic relative to the same impact in a car, and the defense almost always begins from an assumption that the rider was speeding, lane-splitting, or riding recklessly, whether or not anything in the record supports it.

The most common mechanism is also the most winnable: a driver turning left across the rider's path who claims not to have seen the motorcycle. That is not a defense, it is an admission of failing to keep a proper lookout, and scene geometry, sight lines, and speed analysis are what convert it from a he-said-she-said into a documented case.

Indiana law is worth knowing here: failure to wear a seat belt is generally inadmissible to reduce damages, and helmet-use arguments have to be examined carefully against what the statutes actually require rather than what an adjuster asserts.

In an Uber or Lyft case, the injury is ordinary and the coverage question is everything. Which policy applies — and whether a large commercial limit or only the driver's personal auto policy is available — depends on the driver's app status at the moment of impact: offline, waiting for a request, en route to a pickup, or carrying a passenger.

That makes the trip record the single most valuable piece of evidence in the file. A passenger's own app receipt, with driver name, trip times, and route, is far easier to preserve in the first days than to obtain later from a platform's legal department. If you were a passenger, a rideshare driver, or were struck by one, screenshot everything before anything else.

Personal auto policies also commonly exclude coverage while the vehicle is being used commercially, which means a rideshare crash can produce a coverage dispute layered on top of the injury claim. Both have to be worked at once.

When a vehicle strikes a person on foot or on a bike, there is no structure absorbing the impact, so the injuries are severe and often permanent. The liability defense is predictable: the person darted out, was not in the crosswalk, was riding without lights, or came out of nowhere.

What defeats that argument is video, and video is perishable. Intersection cameras, business storefront systems, bus and transit cameras, doorbell footage, and dashcams in surrounding vehicles all record on short loops. In a dense area there is usually more footage available than in any other kind of case — and far less time to go get it.

The rules also help more than people expect. Illinois requires drivers to leave at least three feet when overtaking a bicycle, both states require yielding to pedestrians in marked crosswalks, and local ordinances address opening a door into a cyclist's path. Where the striking vehicle was a bus, a municipal truck, or another public vehicle, a much shorter notice deadline starts immediately.

A fall case is not a smaller version of a crash case — it is a different kind of proof problem. Nobody is responsible for every injury that happens on their property. The claim has to establish that an unreasonably dangerous condition existed, that the owner or occupier created it, knew about it, or should have found it with reasonable inspection, and that nothing was done to fix or warn about it in time.

That is why these claims are won and lost on records the property controls: surveillance video, sweep and inspection logs, incident reports, work orders, tenant complaints, prior falls in the same spot, floor-care and snow-removal contracts, and certified weather history. Most of it is perishable, and the video is the worst of it — systems typically overwrite in seven to thirty days, which is routinely before an injured person has finished a first course of physical therapy.

The two states also analyze these cases differently. Illinois abolished the old invitee and licensee distinction and owes every lawful visitor reasonable care, but keeps a broad natural accumulation rule for snow and ice, so an ice fall turns on where the ice came from. Indiana kept the visitor classifications and applies the invitee duty to ice falls, but applies contributory negligence against governmental defendants — where even a small share of blame can bar recovery entirely — and requires tort claim notice in roughly 180 days.

Where a collision or a fall proves fatal, the claim changes shape. It is brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by the family directly, which means an estate has to be opened before anything else can happen, and the limitations period generally runs from the date of death rather than from the date of the incident.

Who recovers, and for what, is set by statute in each state — the surviving spouse, children, and next of kin, for losses that include the financial support the person provided and the loss of the relationship itself. A separate survival claim can exist for what the person endured before death, and the two are valued differently.

These files are handled with the understanding that the family is dealing with a funeral, an estate, and insurers calling at the worst possible time. The procedural work — opening the estate, identifying every available policy, preserving the evidence before it is gone — is the attorney's job, not the family's.

Two years is the headline number in both states, and it is the wrong number more often than people expect. These are the provisions that most often move the date.