A coalition of advocates for Illinois business and for legal reform have urged the Illinois Supreme Court to turn aside an effort by the state's powerful trial lawyers to seize on a dispute over the constitutionality of two controversial state laws, to win a long sought policy goal that critics say would allow the lawyers to flood courts in Cook County, St. Clair County and other famously plaintiff-friendly venues with lawsuits, in pursuit of larger and easier big money verdicts.
In coming weeks, the Illinois Supreme Court will decide whether 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 state laws in state courts.
However, while that issue alone could be explosive, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association has leaped into the fray, filing a brief with the court earlier this summer which attempts to use the dispute as a vehicle to convince the state Supreme Court to toss out the rule known as intrastate forum non conveniens, a longstanding legal doctrine that has governed in which courts Illinoisans can file lawsuits.
Should the Illinois high court agree with ITLA's reasoning, it could result in a situation in which Illinois residents would have a right to file lawsuits in any Illinois county court they wish - except if those Illinois residents want to try to use state courts to stop the state government from enforcing potentially unconstitutional new laws.
Now, the ITLA filing has triggered counter arguments from a coalition of associations and other groups speaking for Illinois' defense lawyers, businesses and industries, warning the court that accepting the trial lawyers' broader invitation to eviscerate intrastate forum non conveniens would lead to rampant improper "forum shopping," which, they said, would violate defendants' rights while placing heavy burdens on Cook County and other plaintiff-preferred county court systems in Illinois.
“Illinois cannot afford another avenue for lawsuit abuse, and the proposal to abandon forum non conveniens is exactly that. Unchecked forum shopping would undermine job creation, burden our civil court system, and ultimately harm workers, consumers and local economies,” said Katie Reilly, executive director of the newly established Illinois Coalition for Legal Reform, in a statement announcing the filing of the Oct. 16 brief opposing ITLA.
“The only thing this proposal will achieve is creating a legal system that is less focused on fairness and integrity than it is on the interests of plaintiffs’ attorneys," Reilly said.
The ICLR was joined in the brief by the Illinois Manufacturers Association, Illinois Retail Merchants Association, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Chemical Industry Council of Illinois, ISMIE Mutual Insurance Company, Illinois Insurance Association, National Association of Manufacturers, American Tort Reform Association and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.
Constitutionally questionable laws
The dispute between ITLA and the Illinois business groups has arisen as part of the seemingly separate dispute over the constitutionality of two controversial new state laws.
In 2023, a firearms store in downstate Alton, known as Piasa Armory, filed suit in Madison County Circuit Court to challenge the constitutionality of the state's so-called Firearm Industry Responsibility Act. That law would allow gun sellers and firearms makers to be sued over criminal actions carried out by people who purchased their weapons.'
Since it was passed, the law has already been used by trial lawyers and gun control activists to sue gunmaker Smith & Wesson in Lake County Circuit Court, seeking to make Smith & Wesson pay a potentially massive amount of money because a Smith & Wesson rifle was used to massacre people at a parade in suburban Highland Park in 2022.
However, after Piasa Armory challenged that law, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul sought to transfer that lawsuit from Piasa's home county to Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield. Raoul said the transfer was required under a different law, also enacted in 2023, which stripped Illinoisans of the right to file suit to challenge the constitutionality of a state law under the state constitution, except in Cook County and Sangamon County courts.
Until that law, known as HB3062 was passed, Illinoisans could use the legal principle known as general jurisdiction to challenge laws in any circuit court in any of the state's 102 counties.
Raoul, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and other supporters of HB3062 say the law is needed to allow Raoul's office to avoid spending unnecessary resources defending state actions against lawsuits in courthouses located in the state's less populated and more remote areas.
Critics of the law, however, say the law was politically driven, as the state's Democratic leadership seeks to keep disputes over new constitutionally questionable laws away from judges in the state's more Republican or rural counties. Critics noted the law was passed after Pritzker and his allies suffered defeats in downstate courts.
In the ruling, Foster specifically cited the forum non conveniens doctrine.
While rarely employed, courts can use that legal principle to decide if plaintiffs have brought a legal action in the correct court.
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 a particular injury may have occurred.
If plaintiffs can't establish a real connection between their case and the county court in which they filed, a court could cite forum non conveniens to transfer the case to a different county court.
Because the ruling had rendered HB3062 unconstitutional, Raoul immediately appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
In his filings since, Raoul has argued HB3062's jurisdiction limits are constitutional, because Illinoisans still have a right to sue the state, just only in the two counties that contain Chicago and Springfield.
Raoul has argued it is irrelevant that people seeking to sue the state over potentially unconstitutional laws must travel potentially many hours to press their claims, while the attorney general's lawyers would need only travel minutes to the courthouses.
However, within a brief filed before the Illinois Supreme Court in the Piasa Armory case, Raoul also asked the high court to consider abolishing the forum non conveniens rule altogether.
Seizing the moment
The state's trial lawyers - who contribute millions of dollars annually to the Illinois Democratic Party and campaign committees for Democratic officials, like Raoul - immediately seized on that possibility, filing a brief of their own urging the state Supreme Court to use the Piasa Armory case to abolish forum non conveniens.
They argued modern telecommunications technology, such as videoconferencing, e-filing and live streaming, has rendered local in-person court proceedings unnecessary.
And the trial lawyers argued the rule has always been unfair to plaintiffs, because they say the principle of general jurisdiction should allow them to sue businesses and other defendants in any Illinois state court they wish.
They asserted the rule allows defendants to "reverse forum shop" by taking the case to court more friendly to them or at least force plaintiffs to spend time and money defending against the attempt to transfer the case.
At the same time, the trial lawyers supported HB3062 saying state lawmakers have full authority to "set venue" as they wish.
In response to ITLA, the business associations and legal reform groups expressed no opinion on the constitutionality of HB3062, but said the dispute over that question should not lead to abolishing intrastate forum non conveniens altogether.
They warned of dire consequences for the state's court systems, economy and reputation should the Illinois Supreme Court use this opportunity to abolish the rule's protections against "forum shopping."
Eliminating the rule's protections, they warned, would allow trial lawyers to funnel lawsuits from all over the state into plaintiff-friendly venues, and particularly Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties.
Those counties have long been rated as some of America's least friendly court systems for business and some of the country's worst "judicial hellholes." Cook County, for instance, has been held out by the American Tort Reform Association for its propensity to award so-called "nuclear verdicts" against businesses, with verdicts ranging from $10.5 million to $363 million.
Avoiding a 'downward spiral'
The business groups and legal reformers said eliminating forum non conveniens would leave defendants with little ability to thwart plaintiffs' lawyers "forum shopping" in search of such friendly courts, judges and juries.
This, they warned, would swamp Cook County's courts with legal actions that have no real connection to the county, while casting further doubt on the already besmirched reputation of Illinois courts.
"Without the check of an intrastate forum non conveniens motion, plaintiffs’ attorneys will increasingly file complaints in counties in which they expect a more favorable outcome – anticipating that its judges are more likely to grant their motions, its juries are more likely to find liability, or that the ultimate outcome will be a larger damage award," the business and legal reform coalition wrote in its brief.
"This unrestrained forum shopping will take a toll not only on defendants and witnesses, but also unnecessarily burden local jurors and courts, fail to protect local interests in deciding local cases, and undermine the integrity of the civil justice system."
They further argued technological advancements should never replace actual court proceedings, in which all parties, their attorneys, judge and jury are all in the same room, at the same time, experiencing the same surroundings in real time, free of the risk of missed evidence or key moments in the trial because of technical glitches or missing physical cues.
"Remote trials are feasible when circumstances necessitate them, but they are suboptimal," the coalition wrote.
But, they said, "... even if remote trials become more commonplace, advances in technology do not eliminate the need for courts to retain authority to address extreme, unjustifiable forum shopping that may damage the public’s faith in a fair and impartial judicial system and cause administrative problems for courts."
And they argued eliminating the forum non conveniens rule would conflict with the high court's longstanding goal, spanning decades past, to ensure communities and their courts are not burdened "with litigious controversies which arose elsewhere and should in all justice be tried there."
"... Elimination of the doctrine of intrastate forum non conveniens will create a downward spiral," the coalition wrote in its filing.
:Unrestrained, plaintiffs’ attorneys will file more claims in those counties. Defendants will be unable to seek a transfer of lawsuits with no relationship to that county to a more appropriate forum. More lawsuits filed in those counties will lead to more plaintiffs’ verdicts and, in turn, draw attorneys to file more lawsuits there," the coalition said.
"Ultimately, the burden of this forum shopping will fall on courts and jurors, in addition to parties and witnesses, and the public’s interest in deciding local cases locally will suffer."
The business group and legal reform coalition is represented before the Illinois Supreme Court by attorneys Matthew C. Wolfe and Cary Silverman, of the firm of Shook Hardy & Bacon, of Chicago and Washington, D.C.