Trying lawsuits in Chicago at the Cook County Courthouse located at The Richard J. Daley Center is a risky proposition. Even though anti-consumer groups like the Chamber of Commerce and other insurance company proxies have identified Illinois as a judicial “hellhole” the fact of the matter is that injured people face an uphill battle whenever they go to the courthouse.
According to statistics published by the Clerk of the Circuit Court and the presiding Judge of the Law Division, Judge William Maddux, the Law Division had 14,713 new jury filings, and 17,548 pending jury cases — numbers that are fairly consistent with the last several years. And in the three-year period used for this review of Law Division jury verdicts, the number of verdicts each year ranged from 402 to 475. Among those cases juries ruled for defendants in 71 percent of the medical malpractice suits in that same three-year period. And comparing 2007 to 2008, the plaintiff win percentage in medical malpractice verdicts fell from 39 to 18 percent.
While it is true that the vast majority of lawsuits are settled by the parties prior to a jury verdict, those plaintiffs that take a matter to the jury for final resolution face a greater chance of leaving the courthouse without being compensated. At Goldberg & Goldberg our record of success in the Cook County law Division is without compare. We have settled and tried to verdict more then 135 cases that have settled for more then $1 million dollars, including the largest personal injury verdict ever in the State of Illinois, $127,700,000. Winning a case against a doctor or a hospital is an uphill battle. We work up and try our own cases in the firm unlike other lawyers who advertise their experience and results and then refer cases to actual trial lawyers like Goldberg & Goldberg.