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November 17, 2005 —
CHICAGO – Several
Illinois counties have become magnets for large civil lawsuits,
according to a new study released today before an Illinois
Senate hearing. Advocates of court reform say the findings point
to the need for action by the General Assembly.
The study,
“Litigation Imbalance,” conducted by the
Illinois Civil Justice
League (ICJL) between March and October 2005,
analyzed more than 90 percent of major civil court filings in
Illinois. It found the number of major civil lawsuits filed in
2003 in such counties as Cook, Madison, Peoria, St. Clair and
Williamson was grossly out of proportion with those counties’
population and the number of suits filed in similar-sized and
neighboring counties.
“Our findings
confirm what everyone in the business and legal communities
already knows: Illinois has become a haven for civil litigation
to the point that equal justice is not served in the state,”
said Edward Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice
League, who presented the study today at a hearing before the
Illinois Senate’s judiciary committee. “People flock to a few of
our counties from all over the country to file suits that have
nothing to do with Illinois. Illinois taxpayers get stuck
footing the bill for all those trials, court staff and
facilities. Citizens are made to lose valuable workdays and
personal time serving on juries for trials that should take
place elsewhere. The time to enact meaningful reform in Illinois
is now.”
The supporters of
venue reform in Illinois, which include more than 60 businesses,
organizations and municipalities, are asking the Illinois
General Assembly to enact the Common Sense Courts Act, designed
to curb the practice of “venue shopping” by attorneys who file
lawsuits in counties with plaintiff-friendly courts even though
those counties have no real connection to the actual lawsuit.
The effort is headed by the ICJL and the Coalition for Common
Sense Courts, who point to current venue shopping issues as
harming the judicial and business climate in the state, which
businesses examine closely when deciding whether to expand or
locate – or even stay – in Illinois.
Cook County has
emerged as a favorite place to file lawsuits in major civil
cases (those cases where plaintiffs seek more than $50,000 in
damages).
Cook, which makes
up 42.9 percent of the state’s population, accounted for 40.8
percent of criminal felony cases and 43.4 of total judicial
cases in Illinois in 2003, a share of cases in line with its
proportion of the population. But Cook County’s share of major
civil cases was way out of line with its share of the
population, with 63.6 percent of such cases filed in Illinois
winding up in Cook courts. This represents a major shift from
1994, when Cook County accounted for just 47 percent of major
civil lawsuits filed in the state.
 Madison
County, with a population of 260,000, had the highest proportion
of major civil case filings of any Illinois county, with eight
such filings for every 1,000 residents. In comparison, Hancock
County had only eight filings for all of 2003, or 0.4 filings
per 1,000 residents. The two other Illinois counties with
roughly the same population as Madison County, McHenry and
Winnebago (home to Rockford), had only 1.5 and 1.7 lawsuits for
every 1,000 residents, respectively.
As a whole, the
101 Illinois counties outside of Cook averaged only 1.86 major
civil cases filed for every 1,000 residents. After Madison
County, the Illinois counties with the most filings per 1,000
residents were Cook (4.3), Williamson (4.3), St. Clair (3.2),
Hardin (3.1), Massac (3.05), Franklin (2.9) and Union and Peoria
counties (2.4). Most of these counties had double the filing
rate of counties immediately adjacent to them.
“People in these
counties are not that much more litigious than the rest of the
state, nor do they commit more offenses that give rise to large
civil suits,” said Gerald Roper, president of the Chicagoland
Chamber of Commerce and co-chair of the Coalition for Common
Sense Courts. “We’re just dealing with a few courts in a few
counties that plaintiffs’ attorneys know are predisposed to give
large awards. The result is that Illinois gets a black eye as a
place with an anything-goes civil justice system, which sends
the message this is a risky place to do business.”
Not only are more
cases filed in Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties, but
attorneys report that judges there also disproportionately deny
their motions to move trials to more logical venues. Defense
attorneys across Illinois surveyed in October 2005 estimated
that 78 percent of change-of-venue motions are denied in those
three counties. More than two-thirds of defense attorneys who
commented said the most common reason for denying their motions
for fixing venue in a better location centered on “loose
business connections” to the county where the suit was filed.
The Common Sense
Courts Act, first introduced in the Illinois General Assembly
this spring as SB1724, would curb “venue shopping” by
plaintiffs’ attorneys by requiring a real connection between a
lawsuit and the county in which it is brought. The bill as
introduced in the spring would set two basic criteria for
determining the proper venue for a case:
• the lawsuit
must be filed in a county with a real connection to the injury
or wrongdoing that took place; or
• whomever is
being sued must reside in the county where the lawsuit is
filed.
Current
requirements are much looser, allowing for suits to be brought
to any Illinois county from anywhere. The proposal would require
a suit be filed and tried in the county where the most
significant act or event leading to the suit took place, not
where some random small connection to the act or event took
place.
A statewide poll
released earlier this year found 70 percent of Illinois voters
support the provisions of the bill.
“The problem is
well documented, and people across Illinois want it fixed
because they’re tired of paying the price for a runaway civil
justice system,” said Doug Whitley, president of the Illinois
Chamber of Commerce and co-chair of the Coalition for Common
Sense Courts. “All we need is the political will in Springfield.
Our state can no longer tolerate a reputation for coddling
questionable lawsuits.”
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