An alumnus of the University of Illinois and The University of Illinois John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, Robert Heist is an attorney with more than two decades of practice experience. The president of R. Connor & Associates, PC, attorney Robert Heist offers legal counsel to companies in the areas of employment contracts and corporate governance. He also offers product liability defense to manufacturers.
Product liability cases are brought by consumers who are injured by products they bought. However, consumers do not automatically have the right to compensation for these injuries. Manufacturers can defeat or mitigate these claims in court through one of the following defenses: -Contributory negligence. A manufacturer argues that it is not the product alone that caused injury but also the consumer’s negligence. This happens when a consumer misuses a product in a way that the manufacturer could not reasonably foresee. A plaintiff who is found to have been negligent will have their claims for compensation reduced or completely denied. -Assumption of risk. A manufacturer argues that the plaintiff knowingly engaged in behavior that would have caused injury. This is different from negligence in that the plaintiff knew of the risk they were engaging in when using the product in a certain way but did it anyway. With negligence, the plaintiff did not know they could suffer injury from their actions. -Substantial modification. A manufacturer should only be held liable for a product that is not substantially altered by a consumer. If a consumer modifies a product substantially, they cannot blame the manufacturer for injuries occasioned by using the product afterward.
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Robert Heist, a Chicago-based attorney and owner of R. Connor & Associates, PC, has been in the legal profession since the early 1990s. An attorney who specializes in business matters, Robert Heist earned his law degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s John Marshall law school.
The school has a number of accomplishments, including achieving a number three ranking for one of its law journals. The Review of Intellectual Property (RIPL) has been recognized by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and for parties petitioning for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the journal’s contributors comprise some notable names in intellectual property law. Its online platform enables it to be ahead of traditional journals and allows for timeliness. Because the articles are published electronically, authors can publish articles ahead of reviews. This has resulted in the journal being read globally. The Law Library at Washington and Lee School of Law has ranked the UIC’s RIPL No. 3, and it has been rated in the top ten in each of the last ten years. To provide perspective, the rankings include the top 400 journals published in the US and the top 100 published outside the US. This ranking was based on publication statistics and citation counts in a 2015-2019 survey. The world-recognized rankings compare law journals by country of publication, subject, and rank across several areas. |
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