Biggest Campaign Contributions Went to Candidates in ‘Judicial Hellholes’ Counties
Findings Prompt National Watchdog Group to Issue Special Bulletin in Advance of Annual Report
A new study titled Justice for Sale III by the Illinois Civil Justice League (ICJL), and released in conjunction with Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch (ILAW) and the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), reveals that campaign contributions by trial lawyers to Illinois politicians and judges topped $35.25 million during the past 15 years.
In addition to the $6 million contributed through the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (ITLA) legislative political action committee (PAC), the top 25 plaintiffs’ firms and their lawyers and family members collectively invested another $29 million in the campaigns of Illinois office seekers from January 2001 through March 2016. These campaign contributions have gone to legislators, constitutional officers, judges, state’s attorneys, county board chairmen, circuit clerks, county party chairmen, mayors, union leaders and politically allied special interests.
“Our study documents a truly staggering flow of plaintiffs’ bar cash,” observed ICJL president John Pastuovic. “The more than $35 million in contributions equates to roughly $264 every hour of every day for the past 15 years.”
The study also shows that over 98 percent of these trial lawyers’ donations were directed to the most powerful incumbent politicians in Springfield and other Democrats. Furthermore, an outsize portion of this spending benefitted candidates in three counties known for high volumes of civil litigation and plaintiff-friendly outcomes.
“While ITLA’s PAC and plaintiffs’ firms donated millions, policymakers they supported made Illinois’ tort laws even more to the trial lawyers’ liking,” Pastuovic continued. “During the study period, Madison County set an infamous national record for the most new class-action filings in a year, and a statewide medical liability crisis threatened critical care for Illinois patients.
“Meanwhile, lawyers and judges in Madison County built the nation’s largest and most notorious asbestos docket, attracting some 13,220 individual asbestos case filings in 15 years. In fact, sources now estimate that one-quarter of all asbestos cases filed nationwide in 2015 were filed there. With an estimated outcome of $2 million per case, the Madison County asbestos “rocket docket” could be worth more than $1.74 billion annually and could produce nearly $600 million annually in contingency fees for plaintiffs’ attorneys.”
Additionally, just last month, the Illinois Supreme Court, in a 4-3 party line decision led by Justice Thomas Kilbride, derailed a bipartisan movement comprising more than a half-million Illinoisans and various good-government groups who wanted to give voters a chance in November to decide whether an independent committee should draw nonpartisan maps for legislative and judicial districts instead of maintaining the one-party gerrymandered status quo. “It’s no coincidence that the trial lawyer-funded Democratic Party donated $1.5 million to Kilbride’s 2010 retention campaign,” noted Pastuovic.
“Interesting if not surprising is the fact that the biggest trial lawyer donations supported campaigns in Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties – each widely known as once and future Judicial Hellholes,” Pastuovic said. “And when one considers that these counties also host the state’s highest concentrations of lawsuits, it’s fair to ask: Is justice for sale in Illinois?”
The release of Justice for Sale prompted ATRA to issue a special Judicial Hellholes bulletin today, shining its national spotlight on the “trial lawyers’ obvious influence over Illinois’ policymakers and judiciary.” ATRA’s annual Judicial Hellholes® report, established in 2002, documents systemic abuses of the civil justice system throughout the country.
“Madison, St. Clair and Cook counties have been featured regularly in the American Tort Reform Association’s extensively documented reporting on some the nation’s most unfair civil court jurisdictions,” explained ATRA president Tiger Joyce. “So the findings of Justice for Sale, quantifying as they do a disturbing level of influence exerted by the plaintiffs’ bar on the judges in these counties and lawmakers in Springfield, are particularly troubling to us.
“As more jobs- and tax revenue-providing businesses are targeted by often speculative and sometimes fraudulent litigation in the state’s Judicial Hellholes,” Joyce continued, “it will become that much harder for Illinois to solve its mounting debt problems. So we would encourage leaders in Illinois to begin taking meaningful steps to address imbalances throughout the state’s civil justice system.”
ILAW executive director Travis Akin concurred with Joyce’s point about litigation’s impact on jobs in the state.
“It is a fact that our state’s toxically anti-business litigation and political environments have taken a devastating toll on job growth in Illinois,” said Akin. “A clear way to create new jobs in Illinois is for lawmakers to embrace the Governor’s proposed lawsuit reforms, including venue reform that will stop personal injury lawyers from shopping often specious cases to their favorite judges in Illinois’ most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions.
“This new study proves that personal injury lawyers are gaming the system to their advantage by funneling millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Illinois judges. On Election Day, voters will have a chance to deliver their verdict on judges who take the majority of their campaign funding from these same personal injury lawyers who have turned the ‘Land of Lincoln’ into a job-killing ‘Land of Lawsuits.’ Illinois needs judges who will stand up to the personal injury lawyers and return common sense and fairness to our courts.”