One way or another, I'm gonna get ya,
I'll get ya, I'll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya!
They don’t write songs like that anymore. The songs they write now are even more incomprehensible. Blondie’s big hit didn’t seem to make much sense, until it occurred to us that it could be interpreted as Stephen Tillery’s theme song, expressing his never-ending passionate quest to reacquire the multi-billion-dollar judgment against Philip Morris that slipped through his fingers years ago.
One way or another, he’s going to get it. Or so he thinks, apparently.
Tillery filed a class action suit against Philip Morris under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act in 2001, alleging that the tobacco company misled smokers in claiming health benefits for its light and low-tar cigarettes and thereby caused them economic as opposed to physical harm, the latter injury not being covered by the act. Two years later, Circuit Judge Nicholas Byron ruled in Tillery’s favor, but the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently reversed Byron’s billion-dollar decision and denied Tillery’s petition for review, and the riches evaporated.
Like also-ran Hillary Clinton, Tillery has never been able to accept his unexpected and embarrassing defeat.
Having failed to recoup through the court system the jackpot that was awarded and then denied to him, Tillery is now looking at legislative “remedies.”
Last week, attorney Robert King of Tillery’s Chicago office spoke before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee as the only witness in support of House Bill 2472, which would add personal injury to the state’s Consumer Fraud Act, under which Tillery sued Philip Morris 18 years ago.
King may have been the only person to speak in favor of the proposed bill, but no one spoke against it, and Senate committee members approved it by a vote of 7-3. Was there no one to speak in opposition, or did the senators just not look real hard?
Odds are that the full Senate will also approve the measure, the governor will sign it, and Tillery will have another chance to get ya, get ya, get ya!