Illinois Becomes a National Destination – for Easy Lawsuit Wins
Illinois has long been labeled a “judicial hellhole,” with several of its circuit courts singled out for how rich they make local trial lawyers.
But sitting on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk is the potential for a little correction. It could reduce the price of the latest legal cash cow from billions to millions.
Illinois was the first in the nation to allow people to sue because an employer stored biometric information such as a fingerprint or retinal scan. The argument is a person can recover from a stolen Social Security number, but if their biological information were digitally stored and then stolen, recovery is much harder.
The courts took this vaguely written state law and let people sue not only for the first instance, but for each time there was a scan. Clock in or open a door or your laptop with your fingerprint, and there might be thousands of separate “violations” per person per year. A negligent violation was worth $1,000 and reckless or intentional violations were worth $5,000 – for every single instance.
Over 2,000 cases soon flooded Illinois courts. Facebook was sued under the act, leading to a $650 million settlement that gave 1 million Illinoisans about $400 each. Do the math: the lawyers made out OK. Illinois lawyers typically get between one-third and 40% of a claim.
White Castle was sued and estimated its liability could be $17 billion, or enough to bankrupt the fast-food chain. It asked the Illinois Supreme Court to interpret, and the justices suggested about a year ago that state lawmakers should really make it clear what they intended.
They just did so, with both chambers passing Senate Bill 2979. If Pritzker signs it, the Biometric Information Privacy Act will be amended so the “aggrieved person is entitled to, at most, one recovery under this Section.”
That’s about to be a small win if signed into law, but still a win in a state where trial lawyers and government unions buy way too many of our politicians and thus our state laws. The win would have been bigger had the law limited the time to sue to a year rather than five years or if it were to cover those 2,000-plus pending cases, which will certainly make some more lawyers rich or richer without really solving a problem or making anyone whole who was actually harmed.
Those plaintiffs need only show they had their biometric information collected, not show that it was misused or caused them any grief.
Plus, Illinois is still a trial lawyer’s safe and happy space. That’s why its courts keep showing up on the lists of judicial hellholes compiled by the American Tort Reform Foundation.
Madison County is famous for asbestos cases flooding its docket beginning in the 1980s. Big damages have gone to plaintiffs who never set foot in Illinois but who are allowed to sue in that plaintiff’s paradise because an asbestos company once did business there. In recent years over 1,000, or nearly one-third of the nation’s asbestos claims, were filed per year in the county just east of St. Louis.
Neighboring St. Clair County then got into the act, handling thousands of asbestos cases and landing itself on the hellholes list. Both are known nationally for plaintiff-friendly judges and juries, which is why St. Clair County drew 11.5% of the nation’s asbestos cases in 2020. Add in Cook County, and the trio handled nearly half of the nation’s asbestos filings that year.
The asbestos cases have been dropping in recent years, likely as the potential plaintiffs have passed away. But the Illinois plaintiff’s bar has responded with nearly $40 million for nearly 250,000 ads wanting daytime TV viewers to call their asbestos hotlines.
And then came the Biometric Information Privacy Act. No need to prove harm or damages. No old Navy vets or industrial workers dying of cancer from asbestos. Clean, and easy-peasy.
Both Madison and St. Clair counties recently dropped off the hellholes list as asbestos case numbers declined, but Cook County remains and ranked No. 2 in the nation thanks to those fingerprint cases. “The prevalence of no-injury lawsuits in Cook County has propelled the county near the top of this year’s list. Litigation brought under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act continues to flood the state’s court system, with some of the most notable cases brought in Cook County,” the foundation wrote.
Think excessive lawsuits only hurt those with deep pockets? Nope, according to a study by The Perryman Group, which put the cost last year at nearly $1,858 per Illinoisan and a loss of 215,046 jobs in the state because of lawsuit abuse. It put the tort tax at about $2,500 for a Chicagoland resident. Rising tort costs now consume over 2% of everything produced in the nation each year and take an average of $3,621 from each household, according to a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Illinois has a long way to go to fix its torts system and stop being the nation’s drive-thru for jackpot justice. But Pritzker putting limits on the biometrics lawsuits would add a speed bump.
Brad Weisenstein is managing editor for the Illinois Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank dedicated to solving Illinois’ problems through free-market policy reforms.
