McCormick v. Caterpillar Tractor Co.

The case concerns two suits brought by an employee covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1977, ch. 48, par. 138.1 et seq.) against his employer and medical practitioners hired by his employer to recover for malpractice by those practitioners in treating him for an injury compensable under the Act. In question is the application to this situation of the “dual capacity doctrine” recently applied by the supreme court in Smith v. Metropolitan Sanitary District (1979), 77 Ill. 2d 313, 396 N.E.2d 524.

Plaintiff, Max D. McCormick, Sled two separate suits in the circuit court of…