Slices of life are sometimes unfair portions
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[By Christopher Hage
As a practicing lawyer in a small firm, I have the opportunity to handle a lot of slice of life cases that illustrate how things are going in Illinois these days. I enjoy my practice because I really get to know the cares and concerns of my clients' small businesses, entrepreneurs, family companies and individuals. And right now, many of my clients are struggling. As you might guess, I hear concerns about the troubled economy, dysfunctional state government, and laws and regulations that seem to work against small businesses and individuals desiring to eke out some financial success.
For many of my clients today, the stagnant economy is the principle adversary of workers and employers alike. Illinois unemployment has been over 10 percent, and we rank 38th in the nation for unemployment, faring worse than many of our neighboring states. And I think one cause of this is the peculiarity of Illinois law. I became a lawyer because I believed I could use the legal system to help regular citizens as they carry on the business of life and ultimately pursue the American dream. In my experience, our laws do serve many clients quite fairly in most instances when they are involved in disputes; when they seek to right a wrong; or make someone or something whole. Unfortunately, I am also aware of other situations where people and organizations face legal liability that is not based on their conduct, but has more to do with opportunism and sometimes unfair provisions in the law. Consider, for example, the murky theory of civil conspiracy law in Illinois.
In Illinois, those who engage in ordinary business transactions (lenders, attorneys, charities) can be considered a co-conspirator with their client if the client injured someone else in an entirely different transaction. My clients can be caught up in this conspiracy net even if they have no legal duty to the injured person or organization. Perhaps a store or restaurant donates food to a charity that lets the food go bad and thereby makes a homeless person ill. Maybe they loan money to someone who uses the money to perpetrate a scam. As a lawyer it might happen that I give sound legal advice to a company that ultimately decides not to treat a customer in a fair manner. Should I be liable? In all these scenarios there may be a guilty party that caused harm, but there is also an innocent party that may have a connection to the guilty party and yet no responsibility to the harmed party.
Moreover, they can even be unfairly swept up in the rather bizarre legal concept in Illinois of a conspiracy to be negligent. If you are scratching your head over the concept of conspiracy to be negligent you are not alone. The legal theory would have you believe that a person would proactively decide, in coordination with other people, to neglect to do something. That could very apply to someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time rather than someone who actually did something wrong.
It's not news that the law can be quirky, but in this troubled economy the law should not be working against us as we struggle to recover. Plenty of lawsuits are appropriate and meritorious, but we need a legal system that is a guide for fairness rather than an opportunity for abuse. Illinois conspiracy law is one of the latter.
Christopher Hage is a lawyer from Wheaton, IL.