In coming weeks, the Illinois Supreme Court will decide the fate of a law pushed through by Democrats to force Illinoisans, no matter where they live, to use courts in Chicago or Springfield if they wish to challenge the constitutionality of a state law.
However, much more could now be at stake in the case, as the state's politically powerful trial lawyers organization has seized the opportunity to urge the state high court to declare that Illinois residents have a right to file suit in any county court they wish - except if those Illinois residents seek to stop the state government from enforcing constitutionally questionable new laws.
Such a ruling could dramatically explode the number of lawsuits filed in notoriously plaintiff-friendly courts, such as those in Cook County and downstate in Madison and St. Clair counties, and leave all businesses everywhere in Illinois subject to potentially massive payouts ordered by juries far from their home bases in jurisdictions renowned around the country for so-called "nuclear verdicts."
Illinois State Rep. Jay Hoffman (D-Belleville)
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The new filing from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association comes as Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul seeks to overturn the decision of a Madison County judge, who ruled that Illinois state lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker violated the Illinois state constitution when they enacted a new law that would limit the places Illinoisans can sue the state for enacting laws they believe violate the Illinois state constitution.
In the particular case, a downstate Alton firearms store, Piasa Armory, filed suit in Madison County Circuit Court asserting state lawmakers and Pritzker had violated the state constitutional rights of gun shop owners by enacting the so-called Firearm Industry Responsibility Act. That law, enacted in 2023, could allow gun sellers and firearms manufacturers to be sued over criminal actions carried out by people who purchased weapons from them.
Since it was passed, the law has already been used by trial lawyers and gun control activists to bring a lawsuit against gunmaker Smith & Wesson in Lake County court, seeking to make Smith & Wesson pay a potentially massive amount of money after a man allegedly used a semiautomatic rifle made by Smith & Wesson to massacre people attending the Fourth of July parade in suburban Highland Park in 2022.
That case remains pending.
However, after Piasa Armory filed suit to challenge the law, Raoul asked Madison County Judge Ronald J. Foster Jr. to transfer the lawsuit to Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield.
In support of that motion, Raoul's office pointed to another law enacted in 2023 by Pritzker and his Democratic allies in the General Assembly.
Prior to the passage of that law, Illinoisans could use the legal principle known as general jurisdiction to challenge the constitutionality of controversial state laws in any circuit court in any of the state's 102 counties.
Raoul, Pritzker and other supporters of HB3062 say the law is needed to allow Raoul's office to centralize their operations and not expend unnecessary resources defending state actions against lawsuits in courthouses located in the state's less populated and more remote areas, farther from the attorney general's primary offices in Springfield and Chicago.
Critics of HB3062, however, say the law was motivated by politics, as the state's Democratic leadership seek to ensure challenges to their actions are heard before judges that are more likely to be friendly to their causes than in the state's more Republican or rural counties. They say the law was passed after Pritzker and his allies suffered defeats in downstate courts or at least were forced to defend the law further on appeal after losing
In the Piasa Armory case, Judge Foster denied Raoul's motion to transfer the case to Springfield. In that ruling, however, Foster went further, declaring the law unconstitutionally denied Illinoisans their rights under the state constitution to file suit against state actions in their local courthouses.
In the ruling, Foster specifically cited the legal doctrine known as forum non conveniens. While rarely employed, courts can use that legal principle to decide if plaintiffs have brought a lawsuit in the correct forum.
Businesses operating in Illinois, for instance, have used the doctrine to persuade courts that plaintiffs have violated their rights by suing them in plaintiff-friendly courts, rather than in a different county court closer to their base of operations or in which an injury may have actually occurred.
If plaintiffs can't establish any real connection to the county court in which a claim is filed, under the forum non conveniens principle, the case could be transferred to a different county, potentially more fair to the defendant.
In the Piasa Armory ruling, Foster said the forum non conveniens doctrine led him to conclude the state was burdening Piasa Armory by denying them their right to use their home court system in Madison County to challenge the new gun liability law.
Raoul immediately appealed that decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, skipping the intermediate review at the Illinois Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield entirely, because Judge Foster had declared a state law unconstitutional.
More than four months since that appeal was filed, Raoul's office filed their first official brief in the case on July 31, asking the state high court to overturn Foster's ruling. In that filing, Raoul argues HB3062's jurisdiction limits are constitutional, because Illinoisans still have a right to sue the state, just not in every county.
Raoul argues it is irrelevant that people seeking to sue the state over potentially unconstitutional new laws must travel inconveniently, potentially many hours, to press their claims, while the attorney general's lawyers would need only travel minutes to the courthouse.
However, in a passage of their opening brief, Raoul's office also asks the state high court to consider abolishing the forum non conveniens rule altogether.
The fate of that rule has been a subject of debate in Springfield in recent years. In 2020, for instance, Madison County State Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Belleville, proposed legislation specifically seeking to use state law to formally abolish the forum non conveniens rule entirely.
At that time, observers and critics agreed the law would have been a gift to trial lawyers from their Democratic political allies, who benefit from millions of dollars in campaign funding from ITLA and individual trial lawyers.
Abolishing forum non conveniens would allow trial lawyers to funnel lawsuits from all over the state into plaintiff-friendly venues, and particularly Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties. Madison and St. Clair counties are particularly renowned throughout the U.S. as friendly venues for plaintiffs' lawyers bringing asbestos-related lawsuits.
And Cook County has long been rated as one of America's least friendly to businesses and one of the country's worst "judicial hellholes." A recent report from the American Tort Reform Association, for instance, noted that from 2022-2023, Cook County courts produced 12 "nuclear verdicts" against businesses, with ordered payouts ranging from $10.5 million to $363 million.
Eliminating forum non conveniens would leave defendants with next to no ability to avoid so-called "forum shopping" by plaintiffs in search of friendly judges, critics said.
Hoffman's legislation never received a vote.
However, now Hoffman's trial lawyer political allies have asked the Illinois Supreme Court to use the Piasa Armory case to accomplish what Hoffman could not, and strike down the forum non conveniens rule altogether.
On Aug. 1, a day after Raoul filed his opening brief in the Piasa Armory appeal before the state high court, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association filed a so-called amicus, or "friend of the court" brief in support of Raoul's position.
ITLA used the bulk of its filing not to argue in favor of HB3062 specifically, but rather to amplify Raoul's arguments that the time had come to abolish the forum non conveniens rule.
In their brief, the trial lawyers say the rule, which was created by the Illinois Supreme Court decades ago to ensure proper access to the courts for both sides in a case, has always been unfair to plaintiffs, who can't sue businesses and other defendants in any Illinois state court they wish under Illinois' so-called general venue law.
But they argue further that videoconferencing technology, e-filing and other modern telecommunications tech make the need for local court proceedings outdated.
"Modern technology and modern trial practice eliminate any unreasonable inconvenience that could arguably arise from litigating in one Illinois county versus another Illinois county," ITLA wrote in its brief. "Given modern reality, Illinois' general venue statute is a sufficient backdrop against purported plaintiff venue abuse. There is no more justification for engrafting a turgid extra-statutory doctrine to the Legislature's statement on proper intrastate venue."
The trial lawyers argue the forum non conveniens rule allows defendants, instead, to "reverse forum shop," by seeking to relocate the case to a court more friendly to them or at least to force plaintiffs to spend time and money defending against the attempt to transfer the case.
"... There is nothing wrong with plaintiff choosing what she perceives to be a preferable intrastate venue," the trial lawyers wrote. "In fact, not choosing the more strategically advantageous venue would be a dereliction of plaintiff counsels' duty to zealously represent their clients. When Illinois' general venue statute yields more than one permissible venue, plaintiffs are not 'cheating' by selecting one county over another."
However, at the same time, the trial lawyers did not indicate any problems with the venue restrictions imposed by HB3062, saying Illinois lawmakers are free to "set venue" however they wish.
The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association is represented in the action by attorneys Kelly T. Crosby and Thomas Q. Keefe Jr., of Keefe Keefe & Unsell, of Belleville.
Attorneys for Piasa Armory have not yet filed a response, nor has any other organization yet filed a brief countering ITLA's arguments.