Vested Interest - June 2007 Issue

The President's Thoughts

I am honored and humbled to become the 54th President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association.   My involvement in ITLA has been a joy and has provided some of the highlights of my life.  I have had the privilege of meeting, working with, and learning from some of the greatest lawyers and thinkers in our state and in our country.  I have made many good friends. I have learned firsthand how much trial lawyers care about principals of fairness, justice and the rights of their clients.
I wish in this organization we just had the luxury of educating and training our lawyers, helping the legal community and our community at large, and improving our courts. But we are in a battle for survival. When I say “we” I’m not talking about trial lawyers, I am talking about our clients. I am also talking about those people who have yet to be tragically affected by drunk drivers, unsafe construction sites, defective products, bad doctors, or incompetent nursing homes. Trial lawyers are among the brightest and the best in the legal field, and we will always be able to take care of ourselves, but it is the people that we represent; the consumers of Illinois; the citizens of this state that need the civil justice system.  They need access to the courts, they need a fair and independent judiciary, and they need a legislature that cares about the laws that affect them.
We need to make sure that the playing field is level, and most importantly, that our constitutional rights are upheld and defended.  Ultimately,it is only a fair, independent, unwavering, and courageous judiciary that can protect those rights. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned “Judicial elections are becoming political prizefights where partisans and special interests seek to install judges who will answer to them instead of the law and the Constitution.”  We certainly have seen that here in Illinois. It is time for the unfair assault on our judiciary to end.
The attacks on the civil justice system are not new, but the severity and the intensity of the current level of attacks is unprecedented. It gets worse each year as big oil, tobacco companies, drug companies, the insurance industry and their front groups like the Chamber of Commerce funnel obscene amounts of money into political and public relations campaigns designed to win the hearts and minds of the public, the courts and our political leaders. I want all of you to know that the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association is strong, united, determined and energized. I pledge to you that we will fight this battle, and that we will continue to try to get out the truth because the equities and merits are on our side. We will continue to build coalitions and work with groups like our friends, the men and women of organized labor, Citizen Action, The Center for Justice and Democracy and the American Association for Justice. We will use all of the resources available to us to defend and preserve the right to trial by jury, which as Thomas Jefferson said is “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
When it comes to protecting the rights of people who have been injured and wrongfully killed there is a great deal of unfairness and inequity in the law. I learned this first hand when I was a very young lawyer representing the family of a 17-year-old girl who was killed by a drunk driver. Since that time I have always wanted to change Illinois’ antiquated wrongful death act that for the last 154 years has prevented the jury from hearing any evidence of the grief, sorrow or mental anguish suffered by a family whose loved one has been wrongfully killed.
Well, as you know our bill passed the House and Senate and was signed by Governor Blagojevich on May 31st of this year. It is now Public Act 95-003. The sponsor of our Bill in the House was State Representative Jim Brosnahan, and the sponsor of our bill in the Senate was Senator Kwame Raoul. I would like to thank Representative Brosnahan, Senator Raoul, President Jones, Speaker Madigan, all of the Legislators who voted for our bill and Governor Blagojevich. I would also like to thank Jim Collins and Kraig Lounsberry for their hard work on passing this bill. It would not have been possible without them.
I know the upcoming year will be a challenging one. I welcome your ideas, involvement and support. I look forward to working with all of you.

Bruce M. Kohen, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association