We are blessed to live under a Democracy, which provides a civil trial system. Unique among the nations of the world, the United States allows for ordinary citizens to hear jury trials on civil-personal injury claims. People like you and me are selected to determine the amount of compensatory damages that an injured person is entitled to receive. In Cook County, Illinois, we have a central court, the Daley Center in Downtown Chicago, and five, full service, suburban court houses as well.
Almost daily we hear attacks against the civil trial jury system. Three of the most common attacks, have absolutely no basis in reality. The first fallacy is by so-called “conservative” government officials who proclaim a desire to end “frivolous lawsuits”. You should most clearly understand that no one supports the existence of “frivolous lawsuits”. The Plaintiff’s injury bar and Kenneth Fleischer, in particular, would stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who is willing to weed out and to prohibit frivolous lawsuits. Kenneth Fleischer will not participate in filing a frivolous lawsuit. Any political attack on the civil jury trial system, wherein injured persons should receive just and fair compensation, by linking it with “frivolous lawsuits” is irrational. Absolutely by definition a “frivolous lawsuit” would have no merit.
Second, certain government officials quite often rail against “personal injury attorneys”. You should most clearly understand that in every case there are always “two” personal injury attorneys. One represents the injured party and the other represents the insurance company. Any attack on “personal injury lawyers” is actually an attack on the personal injury victims. This office, will not charge a fee for our professional time unless a financial recovery is had. We carefully screen each claim we accept for its value and its merit. Therefore, we only recover funds in the event that your case has merit to it. Accordingly, it is irrational to attack “personal injury attorneys”, when the same officials would never dare publicly attack the personal injury victims, whose rights we represent. A final comment is necessary, in support of a civil jury trial system.
Third, quite often corporate interests complain about jury trials themselves. A brief comment from my personal knowledge is in order here. In my twenty-eight years of legal practice I have participated in hundreds and hundreds of cases upon which Jury Demands have been filed. Of those hundreds and hundreds of cases, on only one have I, Kenneth Fleischer, filed the Jury Demand. On each and every one of my jury demand cases, other than that one, the jury demand was filed by the insurance company representing the defendant! If certain corporations really believed that the jury trial system was so slanted in favor of the personal injury victims, then they must not realize that is their own insurance carriers who most often make requests for jury trials.