Cicero Personal Injury Lawyer
We represent injured people in Cicero and build each claim around the three things that actually decide it: the right Cook County courthouse, the carrier or public agency on the other side, and the medical record behind your treatment, so you are not guessing at any of it while you are still hurt.
Where a Cicero Injury Case Gets Filed
Cicero sits in the Fourth Municipal District of the Circuit Court of Cook County, whose courthouse is at 1500 Maybrook Drive in Maywood. That district also covers Berwyn, Oak Park, Riverside, Forest Park and the Proviso and Leyden townships.
Which building your case goes to depends on what it is worth.
- A Cicero injury claim seeking more than $30,000 is filed in the Law Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County at the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street in Chicago.
- A claim at or under $30,000 is heard in the Fourth Municipal District at Maywood.
We file and appear in both. You do not have to work out which one applies before you call.
The Cicero Roads Where These Crashes Happen
Most of the collisions we are called about in Cicero happen on a handful of streets people here drive every day.
- Cermak Road, which is 22nd Street, is the town's commercial spine and mixes local traffic, Pace buses and delivery trucks along its whole length.
- Ogden Avenue, US-34 and historic Route 66, cuts through Cicero on a diagonal and produces angle collisions at nearly every crossing.
- Cicero Avenue, Illinois Route 50, carries the heaviest north-south volume in town and feeds the Eisenhower at its north end.
- Roosevelt Road, Illinois Route 38, runs the north edge of Cicero and takes traffic moving between Berwyn, Oak Park and the West Side.
- 16th Street, Laramie Avenue and Central Avenue absorb the overflow from all of the above, often on residential blocks with parked cars and limited sight lines.
- The Eisenhower to the north and the Stevenson to the south are the two expressways Cicero drivers reach first, and both carry heavy commercial traffic.
Naming the road matters because it usually tells us who was there. A Cermak collision at rush hour, a truck turning off Ogden and a residential-street crash on 16th are three different cases with three different sets of records to pull.
Freight Off the BNSF Yard Runs on Cicero Streets
The BNSF Cicero intermodal facility, the old Clyde Yard, is one of the largest intermodal terminals in the Chicago region. Drayage tractor-trailers move in and out of it all day, and they reach the interstates by way of Cermak, Ogden, Cicero Avenue and the residential side streets in between. That means Cicero residents share their neighborhood streets with commercial vehicles operating under federal rules, and those rules are often where the case is won.
Cicero Cases We Handle and Where to Read More
These are the Cicero cases we are called about most, and each one turns on a different set of records.
Tractor-trailer and delivery vehicle collisions
Drayage trucks, box trucks and delivery vans are commercial defendants with insurers, safety departments and investigators who start working the same day. Driver logs, hours-of-service records, dispatch data and the carrier's own maintenance file all matter, and they are only available if someone asks for them in time. Read more on truck accident representation in Cicero and how those records get preserved.
Car and auto collisions
Most Cicero claims start with a collision on Cermak, Ogden, Cicero Avenue or Roosevelt. Whether the other driver was insured, underinsured or left the scene changes who pays and which policy the claim runs against, and those distinctions decide the value of the case long before anyone talks about settlement. Read more on car accident representation in Cicero and how each of those policy situations is handled.
We also handle the following for Cicero clients:
- Motorcycle crashes, including the low-visibility left-turn collisions common on the Ogden diagonal
- Bicycle crashes on Cicero's arterials and along the Cermak corridor
- Pedestrian injuries at Cermak and Cicero Avenue crossings
- Rideshare injuries in an Uber or Lyft, as a passenger or as another driver
- Construction injuries on Cicero job sites, roadwork and rail-adjacent projects
- Workers' compensation claims for Cicero warehouse, freight, manufacturing and yard workers
- Slip-and-fall and premises injuries in Cicero stores, apartment buildings and parking lots
- Dog bite claims under the Illinois Animal Control Act
- Wrongful death claims brought by a surviving Cicero family
Pink Line and Pace Injuries in Cicero Carry a Shorter Clock
The Pink Line's western terminal, 54th/Cermak, is in Cicero, and the line runs the Cermak corridor from there into the Loop. Pace routes cover Cermak Road and Cicero Avenue. When a transit vehicle is involved, the case changes in two ways at once.
The first is the record behind it. Ours against a transit authority includes $11 million for a passenger struck by a CTA bus, an $8 million verdict for a woman struck by a CTA bus, and $5 million for a University of Chicago student struck by a CTA bus while riding a bicycle.
The second is the deadline.
A claim against the Chicago Transit Authority has to be commenced in court within one year of the date the cause of action accrued, under 70 ILCS 3605/41. That is half the two years an ordinary Illinois injury claim gets under 735 ILCS 5/13-202, and in an injury case the clock generally starts the day you were hurt. A claim involving a Pace bus runs on a one-year deadline as well, under 745 ILCS 10/8-101. If a bus or a train was involved in your injury, call early in that year rather than late in it.
Your Hospital Records Are the Backbone of the Claim
For most of Cicero, the nearest emergency room is MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, part of Loyola Medicine, and the Level I trauma center for the west suburbs is Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. If you were treated at either one, the records, the imaging and the billing from that visit are what your claim is built on.
That billing also creates a problem people do not expect. A hospital or a health plan will assert a lien against your future settlement, which means part of what you recover can be claimed before you see it. Negotiating those liens down is our work, not something you should be handling alone from your kitchen table.
How Long You Have to File a Cicero Claim
Miss the deadline and the strongest case in Cicero is worth nothing. Three different clocks can apply.
- Two years from the date of injury for most Cicero personal injury claims, under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.
- One year to sue the Chicago Transit Authority, measured from the date the cause of action accrued, under 70 ILCS 3605/41.
- One year for a claim against most other local public entities, including the Town of Cicero itself or a park district, under 745 ILCS 10/8-101.
If you are unsure which one covers your injury, that is the first thing we will tell you. Call (312) 492-7700
or email
info@lsblaw.net.
What Hiring Us Costs You Up Front
Nothing. The fee is a contingency fee, which means we are paid out of what we recover and there is no fee at all if we recover nothing. The case evaluation is free, and asking what your case is worth costs you nothing either. If you want the numbers before you pick up the phone, we lay out what an injury lawyer costs and how the contingency fee works on its own page.
Thirty Years of Verdicts Against Commercial Defendants
The Law Offices of Leonard S. Becker opened in 1993, and every case since has been prepared as though it will be tried. Our results against commercial and municipal defendants include $3 million for a woman struck by a garbage truck, a $2 million verdict in an SUV-versus-truck collision and a $2.2 million recovery for a client who needed a lumbar fusion.
- Admitted in the Illinois state courts, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
- Member of the Illinois Bar Association, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and the Federal Trial Bar for the Northern District of Illinois
- Work covered by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
Leonard S. Becker has spent
more than thirty years in Chicago courtrooms trying injury cases, and the full list of recoveries is on
our case results page.
Questions Cicero Clients Ask First
How much do most personal injury lawyers charge?
Most plaintiff-side injury lawyers in Illinois, including us, work on a contingency fee, which is a percentage of what is recovered rather than an hourly rate. There is nothing to pay when you hire us and no fee at all if no compensation is recovered. Ask any lawyer you talk to for the percentage and the treatment of case costs in writing before you sign.
Is there anything I should not say after an accident?
With your own lawyer, say everything, including the parts you think hurt your case, because a fact we learn early can be handled and a fact we learn late usually cannot. With an insurance adjuster, the caution is real: do not guess at fault or speed, do not give a recorded statement before you have talked to a lawyer, and do not accept a first offer while you are still treating and nobody knows the final cost of your injury.
What is the hardest injury to prove?
Soft-tissue injuries and concussions are the ones insurers contest hardest, because they often do not show up on an X-ray or an MRI even when the pain and the cognitive symptoms are severe. What carries those cases is documentation: going to every appointment, following the treatment plan, and having a continuous medical record that shows the symptoms from the day of the injury forward. Gaps in treatment are what carriers use to argue the injury resolved on its own.
Is it worth suing for a personal injury?
It depends on how badly you were hurt, who is responsible and what insurance is available, which is exactly what a free case evaluation sorts out. Where there are real medical bills, lost income or a lasting injury and a liable party with coverage, pursuing the claim is usually worth it, and because the fee is contingent it does not cost you anything to find out. Many claims resolve without a trial, but a claim prepared for trial resolves for more.
Where is a Cicero injury lawsuit filed?
Cicero is in the Fourth Municipal District of the Circuit Court of Cook County, at 1500 Maybrook Drive in Maywood, where claims at or under $30,000 are heard. A Cicero claim seeking more than $30,000 is filed in the Law Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County at the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 W. Washington Street in Chicago. Cicero cases do not go to the First Municipal District, which covers the City of Chicago.
How long do I have to file an injury claim in Cicero?
Two years from the date of injury is the general Illinois rule under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. A claim against the Chicago Transit Authority is shorter, and suit has to be commenced within one year of the date the cause of action accrued under 70 ILCS 3605/41, while a claim against most other local public entities also runs out in one year under 745 ILCS 10/8-101. Those one-year clocks are the ones people miss, so have your deadline confirmed before you do anything else with the claim.
Talk to a Cicero Injury Attorney Today
Hiring a Cicero accident lawyer should not mean a trip downtown. The office is at 311 N. Aberdeen, Suite 200D, about seven miles east of Cicero, with parking on site. Ogden Avenue runs from Cicero northeast into the near West Side, and the Pink Line reaches the Loop from 54th/Cermak. If travel is not realistic, we come to your home in Cicero or to your room at MacNeal or Loyola. Call (312) 492-7700 or email info@lsblaw.net, and if you are comparing coverage across the suburbs you can see every county and city we serve.