Even as the number of Illinoisans sickened by the coronavirus rises, and the state’s hospitals and ICUs fill with COVID-19 patients, a corporate front group is trying to capitalize on the crisis by disseminating misinformation intended to help its benefactors evade legal accountability for harm done to innocent people.
The insidious American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) has yet again recycled and re-released its “Judicial Hellhole” report – a tedious annual bad-faith tradition that compiles disparaging claims divorced from reality. This year’s report, released amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated our state and nation, comes as the anonymous corporate actors funding ATRA are pressing federal lawmakers to grant them blanket immunity from COVID-19 claims, even in cases where it is provable that their reckless actions and negligence caused people, including their own employees, to get sick or die. The highly deceptive document serves ATRA’s true purpose, which is to warp public understanding of how our legal system actually works.
ATRA and its wealthy corporate backers – its members have included representatives of the tobacco, insurance, chemical, auto and pharmaceutical industries – are demanding sweeping immunity when they expose their workers or customers to COVID-19 or otherwise fail to protect their health and safety. But these corporations are grossly overstating their fears of liability in an effort to exploit this public health crisis and achieve their longstanding goal of being able to increase profits by endangering customers and workers without fear of negative consequences.
Here in Illinois, ATRA’s allies want to change state law to block corporations and insurance companies from accountability when their negligence or misconduct results in serious injury, sickness or even death. ATRA wants to shift the responsibility of paying medical expenses and other costs of care from the companies that caused the harm to those sickened or injured by it. In many cases, that would mean taxpayers would ultimately get the bill in the form of higher Medicaid expenses.
Simply put, immunity would give corporations a free pass to expose workers and consumers to COVID-19 or any other hazardous products or conditions. If given immunity, corporations would no longer have any incentive to take reasonable steps to protect others – and they couldn’t be penalized if they don’t.
The truth is that civil lawsuits filed in Illinois are down 42 percent since 2010. The number of medical malpractice cases is down 32 percent since 2003. Even in ATRA’s favorite target, Madison County, the number of asbestos lawsuits has dropped 21 percent since 2013.
Illinois’ courts are fair and provide an avenue for people of ordinary means who are victims of wrongdoing to hold perpetrators accountable. They serve as a powerful deterrent against corporate misconduct and that’s precisely why ATRA is so determined to shut down the ability of individuals to use the courts their taxpayer dollars fund.
The real “judicial hellhole” that this group is trying to create is a rigged court system that protects its deep-pocketed funders and denies those who have suffered serious injuries, sickness or death a chance for justice because their rights have been stripped away.