More fairness, balance needed in courts
Posted: Tuesday, April 12,
Local personal injury lawyers scoffed last December when McLean County was named as a “jurisdiction to watch” in the American Tort Reform Association’s annual report on the country’s “judicial hellholes.”
Three other counties in Illinois – Cook, Madison and St. Clair – have national reputations as lawsuit magnets and have continually made the “judicial hellholes” list over the past decade. But the people who put together the “judicial hellholes” report must be pretty prescient because just three months after being placed on the report’s “watch list,” McLean County just delivered an eye-opening $90 million verdict that people all across the country are certainly now watching.
The $90 million verdict against Honeywell International Inc., Pneumo Abex, Owens-Illinois Inc. and John Crane Inc. is believed to be the second-highest mesothelioma verdict of all time.