Vested Interest - April 2004 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

I just got off the telephone with a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was seeking my opinion about the most recent radio ads running in Springfield and the metro-east area portraying our profession as "a bunch of sharks in a feeding frenzy." The ads were put out by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. The reporter told me that the spokesperson from the Chamber admitted that their primary goal is to influence jurors on tort cases and ultimately persuade voters to cast their ballots for pro-tort reform candidates. The reporter wanted to know if our organization would be responding. My answer was an emphatic yes.

One of the most effective measures to counter the anti-lawyer "tort reformers" is to put a human face on victims of negligent conduct. We all represent these victims so there should be no shortage of people who could appear at rallies or news conferences to lend their personal stories and support for our civil justice system. The problem is that we have a shortage of victims because many of our members apparently don’t care enough about our civil justice system to ensure that our message can be told by the best advocates possible – our clients.

Recent efforts to rally groups of tort victims has met with half-hearted efforts by our members who don’t bother to contact their clients (many of whom would be more than willing to help). Worse yet, many members of our organization are unable to provide clients because of their habit of routinely signing confidentiality agreements at the time of settlement. An informal survey of lawyers from our organization who practice south of Springfield confirm that confidentiality agreements were the norm on all medical malpractice cases. This is disconcerning for several reasons. First, the only way the public will be informed that their local doctors, hospital, or other business entities were guilty of negligent conduct is if we make some effort to let the public know. Confidentiality agreements hide the wrongdoers’ mistakes and perpetuate the myth that physicians, hospitals, and big businesses are infallible, and all too often, wrongfully sued. Secondly, confidentiality agreements rob us of the opportunity to provide human testimony regarding our issues, especially in geographical areas that are being hardest hit with negative publicity (metro-east, Springfield, Carbondale, etc.). Thirdly, confidentiality agreements may prevent our members from fairly representing their clients (e.g. not being able to determine the value of a case).

How the practice of confidentiality agreements started is a mystery to me, but this much I do know, it should stop now! In my experience, there are very few clients who insist on keeping their cases out of the public eye, and those that express some reluctance are almost always understanding when confronted with the greater public good that results from full and accurate disclosure. Now more than ever, we should all pull together and pledge as an organization to limit confidentiality agreements.

Michael P. Schostok, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association