Justice for Sale: How Illinois’ Lawsuit Machine Is Crushing Small Businesses — and Picking Your Pocket

Lawsuit abuse, political money, and courtroom gamesmanship are quietly draining jobs, driving up prices, and leaving everyday Illinoisans to foot the bill.

By Staff Writer
December 14, 2025

A State Where Lawsuits Pay Better Than Work

In Illinois today, innovation isn’t the fastest way to wealth — litigation is.

You can open a business, hire workers, take risks, and follow every rule on the books… and still lose everything to a single lawsuit. Meanwhile, a growing ecosystem of trial lawyers, political allies, and lawsuit financiers has turned courtrooms into profit centers, extracting billions while contributing little to the real economy.

This isn’t rhetoric. It’s measurable.

According to the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF), excessive litigation now costs the U.S. economy more than $529 billion annually, translating into a so-called “tort tax” of $1,666 per person, every year. That money never shows up in a paycheck. It’s siphoned away through higher prices, lost wages, and jobs that never exist.

That hidden tax doesn’t appear on a receipt. But it’s baked into nearly everything Illinois families buy.

“These jurisdictions are trial lawyers’ laboratories — places where new theories of liability are tested, expanded, and exported nationwide.”
— Tiger Joyce, President, American Tort Reform Association

Illinois is one of those laboratories.

Ground Zero: Cook County and St. Clair County

For years, Cook County and St. Clair County have ranked among the worst “Judicial Hellholes” in America. The designation isn’t about bad judges. It’s about predictable outcomes.

Plaintiff lawyers know which courtrooms deliver friendly juries, permissive evidentiary standards, and massive verdicts. They file there even when the alleged harm occurred hundreds of miles away — a tactic known as venue shopping.

The result is a lawsuit assembly line. Cases are filed not primarily to seek justice, but to force settlements.

Why? Because even a weak lawsuit can cost a defendant hundreds of thousands of dollars just to survive the process.

For small businesses, that threat is often enough.

The Lawsuit Lottery Nobody Talks About

Billboards promise justice. Late-night ads promise easy money: “You pay nothing unless we win!”

But here’s the part they don’t advertise.

In many contingency-fee cases, lawyers collect 33% to 40% of any settlement — before expenses. After legal fees, expert witnesses, and court costs, plaintiffs often walk away with far less than headlines suggest.

The real winners are the firms that file hundreds of cases at a time, betting that defendants will settle rather than risk a runaway jury verdict.

A family-run contractor from Joliet put it bluntly:

“You can do everything right and still get sued. Insurance goes up. Lawyers get paid. And even if you win, you lose. The stress alone nearly shut us down.”

This is not justice. It’s legalized leverage.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

In theory, the courtroom exists to determine facts. In practice, for many Illinois businesses, it has become a place to calculate risk.

Fighting a lawsuit to verdict can mean:

• Six-figure legal bills

• Years of distraction

• Reputational damage

• Higher insurance premiums — or no coverage at all

Most businesses settle. Not because they’re guilty, but because survival demands it.

Those costs don’t disappear. They’re passed directly to consumers through higher prices and fewer choices — or absorbed through layoffs and closures.

Springfield’s Fingerprints: How Illinois Politics Supercharged the Lawsuit Industry

This system did not grow by accident. In Illinois, it has been shaped — and strengthened — by deliberate political choices made in Springfield.

In recent years, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation expanding liability and weakening long-standing protections for employers and insurers, changes that critics warned would invite more speculative and opportunistic lawsuits. Business associations, municipal leagues, and insurance groups opposed the measures, arguing they would lower the bar for filing claims while dramatically increasing settlement pressure — regardless of merit.

Those warnings were dismissed.

The result was predictable. Illinois, already ranked near the bottom nationally for legal climate, became even more attractive to plaintiff firms looking for leverage. Lawsuits became easier to file, harder to dismiss early, and more expensive to defend.

The beneficiaries were not workers or consumers.

They were the firms that profit from volume litigation.

Following the Money: Trial Lawyers, Democrats, and Judicial Power

The lawsuit industry doesn’t just operate in courtrooms. It operates in campaign finance reports.

Trial lawyers are among the largest political donors in Illinois, and campaign finance data shows their money flows overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates and committees — the same party that controls the General Assembly, the governor’s office, and much of the state’s judicial election machinery.

According to records from the Illinois State Board of Elections, plaintiff-side law firms and trial-lawyer political action committees have poured tens of millions of dollars into Democratic legislative, statewide, and judicial races over the past two decades, far outpacing contributions to reform-minded candidates.

That money doesn’t buy verdicts. It buys rules.

Proposals for meaningful tort reform — damage caps, venue restrictions, early dismissal of meritless claims — routinely die quietly in committee. Judges elected with heavy trial-lawyer backing often preside over cases brought by firms that helped finance their campaigns. Even when no law is broken, the appearance of conflict is unavoidable.

The effect is cumulative — and corrosive.

“When the rules favor one side so consistently, the civil justice system stops functioning as a neutral arbiter.”
— American Tort Reform Foundation, Judicial Hellholes Report

The Real Cost: Jobs That Never Exist — and Businesses That Leave Illinois

Economic research consistently shows that states with high litigation costs experience:

• Slower job growth

• Lower rates of business formation

• Higher consumer prices

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform ranks Illinois near the bottom nationally for its legal climate — a signal investors don’t ignore.

When capital leaves, jobs follow.

Every lawsuit that extracts millions without creating value makes Illinois less competitive — and working families poorer.

What Real Reform Looks Like

This is not about denying justice to people who are genuinely harmed. Accountability matters.

But balance matters too.

Practical reforms could include:

• Reasonable damage limits
Capping non-economic damages to prevent single verdicts from destroying otherwise responsible businesses.

• Venue reform
Requiring cases to be tried where the harm actually occurred, not where payouts are highest.

• Fee transparency
Mandating public disclosure of attorney fee percentages so the public can see who truly profits.

• Early case screening
Independent review panels to dismiss meritless claims before they impose crushing costs.

• Judicial ethics reform
Stronger limits on campaign contributions from trial lawyers to restore confidence in court neutrality.

Justice or Jackpot?

Illinois once prided itself on hard work, entrepreneurship, and opportunity. Today, too many see it as a place where lawsuits are safer bets than startups.

Until lawmakers choose fairness over fundraising, the state will continue to lose businesses, workers, and faith in the promise of equal justice under law.

This isn’t just a legal issue.

It’s an economic emergency hiding in plain sight.

Sources & Supporting Research

• American Tort Reform Foundation, Judicial Hellholes® Report (multiple years)

• American Tort Reform Association, U.S. Tort Costs Report

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, State Liability Systems Ranking Study

• Illinois State Board of Elections, Campaign Finance Data

• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, State Economic Indicators

• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment & Business Formation Data

• Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Civil Justice Reform Studies

• Insurance Information Institute, Litigation Cost Analyses

Additional reporting and interviews conducted by staff.