Trial lawyer and former Democratic Illinois state representative Scott Drury appears to have reached a deal to end a 10-year-long lawsuit against political commentator Dan Proft and one of Proft's political action committees over election year political ads which criticized Drury over a state education funding law, but which Drury said were untruthful.
But Proft and his attorney warn the litigation should serve as a cautionary tale concerning the ability for elected officials and those with powerful political connections to "abuse" Illinois' permissive courts to use the threat of lawsuits to punish political critics who speak against them.
In early December, Drury and Proft signed a settlement agreement, appearing to officially end the litigation Drury first launched in 2014, accusing Proft and Liberty Principles PAC of defamation.
Illinois First District Appellate Justice Nathaniel Howse
| Illinoiscourts.gov
Terms of the settlement remain confidential. Proft and his attorney, Jeffrey Schwab, of the Liberty Justice Center, declined to comment on the terms of the settlement, saying the deal forbids disclosure.
Drury did not respond to a request for comment from The Record.
Proft said he considered the settlement "a victory."
"I am very pleased with it," Proft said in comments to The Record. "However, I am incredibly displeased with the decade-long waste of my time, the time of Liberty Justice Center attorneys, and the taxpayers' money."
The lawsuit has followed a long and winding course over a decade. Court actions included several dismissals from Cook County judges, a resurrection from a state appeals court, and repeated re-filings and amendments by Drury as he sought to keep his lawsuit alive against Proft despite judges ruling his claims did not hold up.
Drury, of suburban Highwood, lodged the lawsuit as he neared the end of his campaign to win another term in office from the state's former 58th State House District, which included a large swath of shoreline in southeastern Lake County, including the suburbs of Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Bannockburn and Highland Park. Drury served in the Illinois State House of Representatives from 2013-2019.
In that lawsuit, Drury accused Proft and the PAC of allegedly coordinating with Drury's Republican opponent at the time, Mark Neerhof, of Lake Forest, to allegedly lie about Drury's positions on an education funding bill then pending in the Illinois General Assembly.
That legislation, known as Senate Bill 16, would have changed the way the state funds education, cutting state funding for more affluent school districts to redirect it to less financially well off districts - a move critics said would unfairly benefit Chicago's public schools.
While that bill ultimately died, similarly themed legislation was ultimately enacted by the General Assembly, creating a state education aid system using so-called "evidence-based" funding to decide where the money would go. Opponents said the bill was a "bailout" for the Chicago Public Schools to make up for decades of financial mismanagement.
Drury supported the initial version of the bill, but then changed his position, voting no on a compromise version needed to override the veto of then-Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017. Along with other Illinois Democrats, Drury said he voted against the final bill because it included tax credits to help private schools fund a system of scholarships for low-income students.
Democrats, including current Gov. JB Pritzker, eventually killed off the Invest in Kids program in 2023. The program was strongly opposed by powerful Illinois teachers unions.
In the 2014 campaign, Proft and Liberty Principles funded ads on television and in direct mailers telling voters that Drury supported cutting funding to their local schools "by as much as 70 percent;" that Drury was in favor of sending their schools' funding "to Chicago schools;" and that Drury "has put his Chicago Democrat Party bosses ahead of our schools."
Drury the filed suit, asserting the ads defamed him. He asked the court to order them to pay for publishing false statements about him and his political positions.
The lawsuit struggled to gain traction in court.
In 2017, then- Cook County Judge Franklin U. Valderrama, for instance, ruled Drury could not prove Proft and Liberty Principles published more than statements of political opinion based on the facts available to them at the time and their beliefs concerning the legislation being pushed by Democrats in Springfield at the time.
That dismissal, however, was without prejudice, meaning Drury was given permission to amend the lawsuit and refile.
In 2021, Cook County Judge Allen Walker also ruled in favor of Proft and Liberty Principles.
Walker was assigned the case after Valderrama was appointed to the federal court by then-President Donald Trump.
In his ruling, Walker granted summary judgment to Proft and Liberty Principles, appearing to end the matter.
In 2022, however, a state appeals panel once more revived the lawsuit, saying Walker had improperly granted summary judgment before he ruled on a motion from Drury to force Proft and Liberty Principles to respond to his evidence discovery demands, which Drury argued were needed to allow him to question Proft under oath and establish his legal claims.
That decision was authored by Justice Nathaniel Howse, of the Illinois First District Appellate Court. Howse was joined in the ruling by Justices James Fitzgerald Smith and Cynthia Y. Cobbs. All three are Democrats, as are all the justices of the First District court, which is limited to Cook County.
After two more years of proceedings in Cook County court, the two sides quietly settled the matter in late 2024.
The lawsuit continued for 10 years, despite repeated arguments from Proft and Liberty Principles that the lawsuit represented an attempt by a now former elected official, with connections to the Democratic Party which dominates Illinois politics, to use a lawsuit to punish political critics.
Following the settlement, Schwab noted Illinois, like most states, includes a law which purports to protect citizens against such alleged lawsuits, generally known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, which could be used by wealthy, politically connected or powerful people to intimidate critics and limit free speech rights.
However, Schwab said while anti-SLAPP laws in other states may have quickly ended Drury's action, the Illinois law has been significantly watered down by Illinois Supreme Court rulings in 2010 and 2012.
In those rulings, the Democrat-dominated state high court set precedent potentially allowing defamation lawsuits to move forward against political critics, so long as the plaintiff can establish the allegedly defamatory speech is meant to harm a person's reputation, rather than merely speak out on political concerns, which would be protected by the First Amendment.
Schwab said that interpretation of the Illinois anti-SLAPP law was "the problem," allowing the litigation to continue for as long as it did.
"Something that maybe should have taken months, took years to resolve," Schwab said.
Following the settlement, Proft said the lawsuit in many ways illustrates many problems with the court system in Cook County and the state, including "judges who operate in a world no one pays attention to," allowing them to render decisions for which they are rarely held accountable.
Proft characterized Drury's lawsuit as "lawfare," a "case that had no chance," but which was intended to punish political opponents.
Proft noted he benefited from access to enough legal representation, funded from his own resources and from the non-profit Liberty Justice Center, to defend against the lawsuit for 10 years.
But he said many other political critics may not be able to afford to similarly fend off such actions brought by powerful political actors.
Proft also noted Drury was able to keep up the lawsuit in part because he was represented by his father, attorney Larry Drury, of Chicago.
"I think they thought I'd fold after a while," Proft said. "I said from the start we'd take it to the Supreme Court, if we had to."
Proft further criticized the First District appellate decision that revived the lawsuit, calling it "completely absurd" and "unprofessional."
"Most people cannot afford to take people like Scott Drury and judges like Valderrama and Howse who, in my opinion, operate in bad faith putting politics above the law," said Proft.
Proft said it was "important" for stories like his, in this lawsuit, to be told to bring such judges and others involved in such cases "out into the light of day and restore the rule of law in the civil justice system in Illinois."
He said telling such stories is particularly important in light of the Illinois Supreme Court's decisions which "gutted" the anti-SLAPP law and limited its protections against lawsuits intended to "violate the constitutional rights of others solely for the purpose of extracting political retribution."
"This would be one way to chill frivolous lawsuits like Drury's," Proft said. "In the absence of such a remedy, we must do what the system isn't currently set up to do, which is to hold public officials accountable to the public they are supposed to serve by telling the stories of their abuses and naming the names of the abusers."