With a grain of salt ...

I have practiced personal injury, medical malpractice and other kinds of injury law in the Bureau County Republican’s circulation area for the past 51 years. I feel it important to advise my many friends, clients and others in this circulation region that my friend and colleague Illinois Trial Lawyers Association President Flowers was right on in his comments about Mr. Travis Akin in describing for you Mr. Akin’s and his associates’ real motivation in publishing his comments in his Letter to the Editor. Mr. Akin is not looking for fairness and common sense in the judiciary, but rather for the election of judges that have connections to the “big boys” as I describe them. The “big boys” consist of the oil interests, the tobacco interests, the insurance companies, the medical societies, the doctors, the hospitals, and last but not least, to the politicians that are beholden to the members of the “big boys,” which combine for large past and future political donations to help them get elected — and not do the people’s business but distort and work for the distortion of a legal system that works for you, the working (and unfortunately the non-working) men, women and children.

The current system is not perfect, but it is a system that provides each of us the right to seek accountability for irresponsible, reckless and negligence conduct. The current system allows for those of you who have been damaged or injured because of the reckless or negligence conduct of these corporation and members of the “big boys” combine, including the doctors and hospitals, to bring your complaint to a court system that allows for juries of your peers to make the determination as to whether a recovery for those damages and injuries should be awarded, and if so, the amount of your injuries and damages that you may have suffered as a result of this irresponsible and negligence conduct. What the “big boys” combine, including those associated with Mr. Akin, are really looking for is to limit the responsibility of his associates so that more profits can be realized because of artificial caps that they want to have in place on the amount of damages one can receive, notwithstanding that the injuries may be catastrophic, such as a paraplegic, quadriplegic or the loss of a husband, a father, a wife or a child. Those artificial caps that they want to put in place currently apply only to medical malpractice, but what Mr. Akin and his group will be looking for is across the board application, notwithstanding what the nature of the case might be.