About Timothy Heath
Timothy W. Heath is a founding partner of Heath & Heath, P.C. in Naperville, Illinois. He earned a B.A. in History and Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 1984, graduating Summa Cum Laude. Heath served in the U.S. Army from 1974 to 1976 and received an Honorable Discharge in 1980. After law school he worked as a Cook County Assistant State's Attorney from 1984 through 1987, then practiced civil defense at Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon from 1987 to 1990, and joined Terrence K. Hegarty & Associates, Ltd. as a plaintiff's personal injury attorney in 1990. He founded Timothy Heath & Associates, P.C. in 2009.
Heath has authored 28 published appellate opinions, including eight before the Illinois Supreme Court. He has been selected to the Super Lawyers list every year from 2009 forward. In 2022 he and Sharon Heath obtained a $49.25 million jury verdict in Browning v. Advocate Health and Hospital Corp., a sepsis medical malpractice case, which the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed in 2023. He is admitted to the Illinois bar, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar.
Proven verdicts and settlements
A Cook County jury awarded Joseph and Christine Browning $49.25 million after physicians at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital waited 11 days to perform exploratory surgery on a sepsis infection that destroyed most of Joseph's small bowel. Sharon L. Heath and Timothy W. Heath of Heath & Heath, P.C. represented the Brownings, and the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the verdict in 2023.
A Cook County jury awarded $10,944,000 in 1997 to a newborn girl left with extreme and permanent neurological damage after Lake Forest Hospital failed to provide any mechanism for getting a description of her placenta into her chart and had no policy for monitoring the blood pressure of stressed newborns, delaying treatment for blood she had lost before delivery. The trial court reduced the verdict to $9,644,000 to credit a prior $1,300,000 settlement with other defendants, then wiped out the award entirely by granting the hospital judgment notwithstanding the verdict and ordering a new trial. In June 2000, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed both rulings, reinstated the $9,644,000 judgment, and denied the hospital's conditional request to cut the award further. Terrence K. Hegarty, William J. Harte, Timothy W. Heath and Joan M. Nannix represented the family; Heath is now a named partner at Heath & Heath, P.C.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
