Earnings From Personal Injury Claims
Personal injury lawyers and their clients have made millions thanks to a thriving industry amid the rolling hills of two south-western Illinois counties, one that has existed for the last 20 years. Surrounding St Clair County are quiet courthouses where high priced lawyers won hundreds of millions of dollars in awards and settlements from several corporate giants. After they were injured during the clean-up of a toxic spill at Sturgeon, Missouri, forty seven workers from one of the huge companies were awarded with nearly $58 million in settlements in January 1979. When it comes to dioxin permanently injuring people, this was the first verdict issued.
Thanks to the jury, 32 of the 47 workers who filed suit, more than the total number of reported million dollar injury verdicts in any state, were instant millionaires. An industry in itself is the legal community according to an East St Louis attorney who won a $15.65 million verdict against a big company in St Clair County this year. Apart from living here, they buy houses, go to the grocery stores, and hire union people. The reputation for big awards given by the counties’ jurors, drawn from a largely blue collar pool, has spread.
The latest verdicts would top the total number of million dollar awards in the entire state of New York as the research director of a jury verdict research company predicted. In this situation, the lawyers will usually get about a third of the award in personal injury cases and about a quarter of what they win for their clients in railroad and barge injury cases. For the injured railroad and barge workers, for them to have access to the talented, high powered lawyers whose specialized offices dot the southern Illinois countryside, there are two federal laws that can be applied.
The Federal Employees Liability Act of 1910 allows injured railroad workers to file personal injury claims wherever the railroad does business. There are tracks of a dozen rail lines that crisscross Madison and St Clair counties. There is the Jones Act of 1915 as well and here is where barge and towboat workers can file personal injury claims in the area like the crewmen injured on the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans do. Normally, 33 months is the waiting period in Madison or St Clair counties if you need to get a trial on a personal injury suit while it runs for five to six years in Chicago.
20 percent was kept, 75 percent went to the plaintiff, and 5 percent was donated to the union’s legal defense fund for every settlement won the St Clair County Circuit Judge said. In this case, a lawyer to whom union officials would steer their members was said to have a ticket hence the name the ticket system. For the awards, they stood up on appeal as mentioned by the judge who has been either a judge or lawyer in the area for years. Having worked for the railroad and steel mills for two or three generations were the people here.
When it comes to the Madison County government and the lawyers and business people in the area, the suits have blessed them financially. As mentioned by the Madison County Circuit Clerk, the Madison County Circuit Clerk’s office was able to operate with a surplus of close to $500,000 for each of the past three years because of filing fees of close to $100 a case for civil suits greater than $15,000. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 15,294 civil suits, excluding traffic violations, were filed.
Here, people do not realize that what they have is a multi-million dollar business according to a personal injury lawyer. Other than corporate personal property tax, they have other taxes that they are paying for. In this case, they rent buildings and put their money from these judgments into the local banks as well.
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