Lawsuit abuse spreading in Illinois

Illinois sadly has three well-established judicial hell-holes, Cook County, where I live, and two downstate counties, Madison and neighboring St. Clair. Roughly half way between those abysses is McLean County, which is the Prairie State's newest lawsuit abuse trouble spot.

Illinois is known for many things--a lot of them are wondrous. Lisa A. Rickard, the president of the U.S. Chamber Institute of Legal Reform in Washington, is disturbed by one dishonor of the Land of Lincoln:

But it also has another claim to fame: the state known for handing out multimillion dollar jackpot-justice verdicts. This distinction is reasserting itself in McLean County with frivolous "no-causation" conspiracy claims. It works like this: trial lawyers target solvent businesses in asbestos lawsuits even if they have no connection to their clients. They score big fees, settlements and damages by claiming that one or more companies conspired from the 1930s to the 1970s to suppress health and safety information concerning asbestos.

This is a setback for Illinois. The state struggled for years to shed a reputation as a plaintiff's lawyer paradise. Its infamy was born a decade ago when Madison and St. Clair counties created a cottage industry for out-of-state class-action lawsuits that would have been rejected by almost every other court in the country.

Now, McLean County has become a hot spot for a similar abuse of justice. This threatens all companies because it demonstrates a company doesn't have to cause any injury to be held liable — and face a bill in the tens of millions of dollars.

Plaintiffs claim they were injured when they were exposed to asbestos at the former Union Asbestos and Rubber Co. in Bloomington, Ill. UNARCO is bankrupt and is, therefore, never named as a defendant. So the plaintiffs sue other unrelated but financially viable companies — Owens-Illinois, Honeywell International and Pneumo Abex — claiming a conspiracy.

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