For more than a century, my family has run a manufacturing company in Illinois. Atlas Tool Works has weathered recessions, global competition, supply chain shocks, and every kind of business cycle imaginable. But the challenge that has become more prominent in recent years is the one that spawns in Illinois’ own court system.
This year, Illinois once again landed on the Judicial Hellholes® list. Cook County, joined by Madison and St. Clair counties, was ranked the 7th-worst legal environment in the nation. For business owners like me, this is not a surprise. It is the predictable result of a legal climate that has drifted far from fairness and increasingly rewards litigation tourism, jackpot verdicts, and lawsuits engineered not to deliver justice but to shake down small businesses.
Cook County has long been the epicenter of this problem. Residents here now pay an annual “tort tax” of $2,158, the result of excessive litigation costs that also wipe out nearly 160,000 jobs every year. That’s $8,632 a year for a family of four! That’s money that could otherwise go toward mortgage payments, tuition, or groceries. For a state already struggling to retain workers and employers, these numbers should set off alarm bells throughout the halls in Springfield…