Karen Kies DeGrand leads the firm's appellate practice group. She has briefed and/or argued cases in a wide array of substantive matters before the appellate and supreme courts of Illinois, as well as in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and in the Wisconsin and Indiana appellate and supreme courts.

Recently, Ms. DeGrand handled the briefing and oral argument in a case resulting in an Illinois Supreme Court opinion in which the court broadly interpreted statutory time limits to uphold the dismissal of a claim against a DBMS professional liability client.  In this medical negligence case, DBMS attorneys successfully defended their client, a surgeon, from the co-defendant hospital's belated attempt to recover the amount the hospital paid to settle the case with the medical malpractice plaintiff. More than five years after the surgery at issue, the hospital filed a cross action against the firm's client and co-defendants. The trial court granted the physicians' motions to dismiss based on the argument that the hospital had to file the action within four years of the patient care at issue under 735 ILCS 5/13-212(a).  The Illinois Supreme Court had not previously decided this issue and accepted the hospital's request that it review the case. Ms. DeGrand successfully argued that an implied indemnity action implicates the same insurance policies covering healthcare providers for direct malpractice actions. In its January 21, 2011 opinion the supreme court agreed that, by the General Assembly’s decision to broadly word the statute, it intended to prevent a physician’s extended exposure to liability, and not just in direct malpractice lawsuits. The supreme court recognized the wide reach of the limitations provision in section 13-212(a) and upheld the dismissal of the hospital’s action for implied indemnity against the surgeons.

Ms. DeGrand also is an experienced trial lawyer whose practice is concentrated on professional liability (medical and legal malpractice) and business and insurance coverage disputes. The matters underlying the legal malpractice cases have involved a variety of areas, including criminal defense, domestic relations, transactional work, estate planning and tort litigation. Her coverage experience includes insurance disputes involving contested interpretations of professional liability policies and of commercial general liability policies in the context of construction and product liability lawsuits.

Ms. DeGrand serves as Vice President of the Appellate Lawyers Association ("ALA"). The ALA is an organization of Illinois lawyers whose practices are focused on the courts of review. She is co-editor of "The Brief," a publication of the ALA. Since 2007 Ms. DeGrand annually has been named a Super Lawyer in Illinois in the area of appellate practice. Super Lawyers are the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state, as chosen by their peers.

Ms. DeGrand joined the firm in 1995 and was elected to partnership in 1998. She was previously with Baker & McKenzie, which she joined in 1985 after her graduation from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she was an Associate Editor of the University of Illinois Law Review. She received her undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois where she was awarded Bronze Tablet, the University's highest recognition for academic excellence.