By Illinois Review
On Monday, attorney Tom DeVore filed in Macon County, an appearance to represent plaintiffs who joined an assault weapons ban lawsuit filed by Illinois Republican State Rep. Dan Caulkins, Decatur.
On January 26th, Caulkins filed a nearly identical lawsuit to the one filed by DeVore on January 17th challenging the constitutionality of the assault weapons ban, and named Gov. JB Pritzker, D, Attorney General Kwame Raoul, D, and Senate President Dan Harmon, D, as defendants.
On January 20th, Effingham County Judge Joshua Morrison granted DeVore’s motion and halted Pritzker’s assault weapons ban effective immediately while the lawsuit proceeds. The suit represents 860 plaintiffs across the state.
DeVore is representing a group of plaintiffs in the Caulkins lawsuit who believed their financial donations required to join the suit were going to cover attorney fees, but instead were deposited into Caulkins’ political campaign account.
Defenders of Caulkins say that he planned to pay for the legal fees associated with the lawsuit from his campaign account.
Plaintiffs also allege that not everyone was added to the lawsuit, and instead were included as members of a pro-gun organization called Law-Abiding Gun Owners of Macon County – an association that none of them had heard of before, or agreed to join. In other words, plaintiffs were led to believe that they would be named as individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and not lumped together under an umbrella organization that they were unfamiliar with.
A copy of DeVore’s Petition to Intervene can be accessed here.
Please continue to follow Illinois Review and DeVore Law Offices for more updates as they become available.
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