General Assembly Returns; ICJL's Election Year Agenda:

1. Venue Reform
2. Venue Reform
3. Venue Reform

After the Circus that was the 2007 session of the Illinois General Assembly, it's hard to treat the formal beginning of the 2008 term with much seriousness. After all, neither the ringmaster nor the clowns have changed.

But they return this week for the first of a scheduled 45 days of service to the people of Illinois. With some luck the adults, most notably the Speaker of the House and the Republican leaders in both chambers, will be able to run the show.

The adjournment date of May 29 is, of course, a joke, not to be taken seriously by any of the leaders or members of the General Assembly. Last year had a similar "adjournment" date and the members of the General Assembly kept meeting -- not every day -- throughout the summer and fall and an Illinois citizen would be hard pressed to name one thing they did.

This year -- or was it last year? -- they managed to agree on a funding proposal to bail out the public transportation system in the Chicago area and it apparently is going into effect, but only after the Governor of Illinois insisted that all senior citizens in the state should be able to ride public transportation at no charge.

It's hard to predict what "solutions" they'll find for Illinois problems in 2008, or how long they'll stay in session. This is an Election Year and the entire Illinois House of Representatives and 40 (of 59) Senate seats are on the ballot.

As most incumbents are seeking re-election, there will be a desire to get out of Springfield and get back home as quick as possible to start pressing flesh. The anxiety may be somewhat higher this year because (1) it is a Presidential year, and that always generates greater interest; (2) the Democratic candidate for President (regardless of which) is going to have Illinois ties and thus interest will be higher; and (3) the early Illinois primary (it was last week, if you've been sleeping) has put the whole process in motion already so the juices are flowing.

Some lucky souls (not legislators) are finished with the 2008 Election test already: the 37 candidates for judge who are unopposed in the General Election. If they made it through the primary and there was no opposition, they should plan to stay healthy and begin measuring the windows in their new offices for drapes. (There are some remote exceptions to this free ride for unopposed judicial candidates but they are too remote to spend ink (or band-width) explaining.)

(Note: Not counting retention, 61 judicial positions are on the Illinois ballot in 2008. Only 24 of them involve Democrat vs. Republican candidates in November. The other 37 were determined last week in primary elections. They included one Supreme Court race and three Appellate Court races.)

The election year means there will be a lot of posturing in the General Assembly -- and maybe an opportunity for some causes to turn voter interest into legislative action.

That's our goal: while the current General Assembly remains generally hostile to the cause of civil justice reform, we will continue to pursue a broad reform agenda and we'll attempt to make the cause of civil justice reform an important issue in selected legislative races.

Highest on our list is venue reform. ICJL has introduced and supported venue reform legislation annually for the past six years (HB 1892 and SB 1571 in 2007.

The simple -- it is simple -- reason for this reform is this: lawsuits should be filed in the jurisdiction (the venue) in which it makes sense. That means they should be filed where the wrongdoing took place, or where the injured party resides, or where the offender resides or is based. Period. There are three possibilities and each of them makes sense.

But lawsuits should NOT be filed in a jurisdiction selected by the plaintiffs' attorney based on the attorney's guess of where the plaintiff has the best chance to prevail. This kind of "forum shopping" (and the complicity by legal jurisdictions) has brought scorn upon the legal system in some areas of the country, including several in Illinois.

As Steve Schneider, Midwest vice president for the American Insurance Association indicates in the news item below, AIA "will continue to push for some form of venue reform in Illinois that would help to codify two recent state Supreme Court decisions that clearly recognized out of state cases, involving non-residents, have no business in Illinois' courts."

That's right. Twice within the past four years the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled against forum shopping. One of the rulings came on the same day that the Illinois Civil Justice League released a report, "Litigation Imbalance," and presented it to a hearing of the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee. It fell, for the most part, on deaf ears. The report pointed out -- and documented -- that there are problems in certain Illinois jurisdictions.

Ironically -- and to their credit -- the jurisdiction in Illinois that has had the worst reputation -- Madison County -- has taken steps to correct the problem within their own borders and limit or reject out of venue lawsuits.

Most of the other 101 jurisdictions in Illinois have not had the same serious problem as Madison or Cook Counties so there is no need for local court systems to enact internal policies to correct problems that don't exist.

But the problem has been widespread enough to call for the General Assembly to enact a law -- such as HB 1892 or SB 1571 -- to make law out of what seems to be common sense.

If the legislators can't figure out what HB 1892 or SB 1571 do, or why, they can consult with the judges in Madison County. They have figured it out.

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(Note: ICJL's complete legislative agenda will be fully described in coming weeks and is available on our web site, www.ICJL.org.)

-- Ed Murnane
Illinois Civil Justice League
February 11, 2008