MADISON - ST. CLAIR RECORD

To the editor:

While the rest of us weren't looking Illinois has become a haven for frivolous lawsuits. That's great news for rich trial lawyers, but bad news for our state's economy and even worse for small business, working families and the consumer.

Even if they've never been sued, every small business in our state is paying for lawsuit abuse. Every time a small business pays an insurance premium part of the money ends up lining the pockets of a powerful trial lawyer. That's money that would have been much better spent investing in the business and creating badly needed new jobs.

We are all to blame for this unfortunate situation. This includes greedy lawyers, who take home a third of any damage award they win, politicians who depend on campaign contributions from trial lawyers at election time and the rest of us for not demanding that fairness and justice be returned to our courthouse.

Trial lawyers are rich and powerful. Their political clout has allowed them to repeatedly block meaningful lawsuit reform legislation. But the rest of us deserve better. We deserve a legal system that puts our rights ahead of the financial interests of trial lawyers.

We deserve a legal system that helps keep good jobs and business investment in our state. We should demand that the governor and the legislature do more to deal with lawsuit abuse. The fairness of our legal system and health of our state's economy are at stake.

Arnold W. Buescher
Edwardsville