Bruce M. Kohen Response to "Personal injury lawyers adopt stealth campaign"

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

The insurance industry and big business are at it again leading a propaganda campaign that unfairly attacks trial lawyers in an effort to divert attention from their actual mission.  What is their objective?  The real agenda of these big and profitable corporations is to limit access to our courts by regular people in Illinois.  They know that the civil justice system is the only way that working people and consumers can hold wrongdoers accountable.  They don’t like it because they cannot control it.  So they send in front groups to do their dirty work. 

This time it was Ed Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League (ICJL) doing the bashing of trial lawyers (Personal-injury lawyers adopt stealth campaign, October 23, 2007).  That is what he does.  It is a full time job for him.   Despite its name, the ICJL has nothing to do with justice.  It is all about injustice, and protecting its funding sources, the insurance companies and big business.

Mr. Murnane’s tirade focused on a new law that modernized Illinois' 154 year-old Wrongful Death Act by allowing the jury to hear and consider the grief, sorrow and mental suffering of the families whose loved ones have been wrongfully killed.  The old law prevented parents from even talking about their grief and sorrow over losing a child.  Is there any way a jury can fully understand the extent of a parent’s loss when the parent can’t talk about their grief and sorrow?  Of course not.

Wrongful deaths are commonly caused by drunken and reckless drivers, unsafe construction sites and manufacturers of deadly household products and children's toys. The opponents of the new law showed their true colors when they told the legislature that the reason they feel that wrongdoers shouldn't have to make restitution for grief and sorrow is because people die sooner or later anyway, so there's really no damage.  Tell that to a parent whose child is killed by a drunken driver.

Ironically, the General Assembly voted unanimously a few years ago to enact legislation that entitles pet owners to restitution for "emotional distress" when someone wrongfully kills their pet.  Mr. Murnane and his group were not opposed to this law.  So Mr. Murnane, do you care more about pets than people? 

For years, the insurance industry, big business and their front groups like the ICJL have been trying to take over the courts in Illinois.  Is there any doubt whose rights they want to protect? 

Bruce M. Kohen, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association