By Dr. Jim Economos, DDS
Growing up in Illinois, I had the chance to see first-hand the unique role local businesses and medical practices fill in communities across our state. They bring all sorts of opportunities to the communities they serve and create valuable jobs for those communities in the process. Unfortunately, since becoming the owner of one of my own dental practice, I’ve also seen first-hand a lot of the unnecessary hurdles small-business owners face every day.
One of the biggest challenges associated with operating your own business in this state is the bevy of lawsuits that you risk facing every time you open your doors. Liability suits, malpractice lawsuits, workers’ compensation cases, and more pose a real danger to small businesses every day.
Why do they represent such a serious threat? That’s because the legal bills associated with addressing and settling these claims – not to mention the further costs of trying to prevent future cases – are big. They’re expenses that a lot of smaller medical practices and family-owned businesses simply can’t afford to shoulder, and unless we do something about it, we risk putting well-meaning and hard-working entrepreneurs out of business.
One of the fairest ways to do this would be to put caps on the awards courts can hand out for different cases, depending on the types of claims involved and the circumstances of each individual lawsuit. We read all the time about the big-money court awards that get handed out, but we often fail to realize that the money for those awards comes out of a businessowner’s pocket. That means money they could be using to improve their customer services, hire new employees, and more is instead going to fund yet another lawsuit. By working together to find fair cap values, we can ensure that people who are genuinely harmed have recourse to seek compensation without risking a local company’s livelihood in the process.
An even better solution would be for Illinois to institute caps on the fees trial lawyers can walk away with once they win or settle a case. Take Texas for example. In 2003, Texas implemented a cap on non-economic damages in health care liability cases which resulted in far lower medical malpractice rates for Texan physicians. An acquaintance of mine owns his own medical practice which he moved from Chicago all the way to Texas after learning about the more controlled rates. He now pays a fraction in medical malpractice rates in Corpus Christi, compared to the larger amount he would be paying if he stayed in Chicago.
Without such a cap, Illinois suffers. Right now, there are several trial lawyers around the state who use all manner of liability claims, malpractice accusations, and more to leverage businesses into big settlement agreements just so they can collect massive fees. Letting these trial attorneys take advantage of the system just so they can get a bigger payday is unfair to small businesses, unfair to their clients, and mostly importantly, unfair to the taxpayers across the state whose tax dollars are wasted as these cases use court time and resources.
If we don’t implement reforms, we risk becoming a state that is hostile to small businesses and family medical practices, forcing them out to other, more business-friendly states that let them pursue their dreams without the constant fear of being sued. Just as bad, we risk discouraging others from opening their doors here at all due to the hostile lawsuit climate. Illinois communities cannot afford to lose the local companies and medical practices that offer resources and services that might otherwise be out of reach to them just because of expensive legal bills.
I’ve lived in Illinois all my life. I was born here, I went to school here, and I started my business here. Over the years, it’s become clear to me how important community businesses are to the people they serve, and those deserve to work with business owners and be treated by medical professionals who can relate to them personally.
That is precisely why we need our elected officials in Springfield to realize the danger small-business owners and the operators of local medical practices face due to lawsuit abuse. Improving the business climate for them means communities across Illinois will feel the benefits, and will also ensure people across the state have access to the services they need without the fear that an expensive lawsuit will put them out of business.
