Illinois Capitol, seen from steps of Illinois Supreme Court, Springfield
CHICAGO AND MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS - Thanks to disproportionate so-called "nuclear verdicts," rampant lawsuits based on "junk science," and a new state law that the business community warns will only open Illinois' courts to even more of the same, courts in Chicago and the Metro East region have again landed high on the list of America's worst so-called "judicial hellholes."
On Dec. 9, the American Tort Reform Association released its annual list of what it called the country's worst and most abusive civil court systems.
In the 2025-2026 "Judicial Hellholes" report, ATRA ranked the court systems of Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties collectively at No. 7 on its list.
ATRA compiles and publishes the list each year to to draw attention to some of the country's courts that are the most welcoming to lawsuits and most hostile to businesses and employers in the way judges apply and interpret the law and court rules.
As in previous years, ATRA said that allegedly abusive legal system results in real costs for Illinois and its residents. Using information supplied by The Perryman Group, ATRA estimated such "lawsuit abuse and excessive tort costs wipe out" nearly $24 billion from Illinois' economy every year, while leading to losses of 208,000 jobs annually.
This year, ATRA highlighted eight jurisdictions, including state, county and city court systems, it believes should be considered the worst of the worst in the U.S. for laws, policies and rules that enable lawsuit abuse and create hostile and costly legal environments for employers and other drivers of the U.S. economy.
Los Angeles claimed the top spot for the first time.
The second largest city in the U.S. was followed on the list by America's largest metro, New York City, which was ranked No. 2.
Courts in South Carolina which handle allegedly abusive asbestos lawsuits came in at No. 3.
They were followed by Louisiana; Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas; St. Louis; and Cook County, Madison County and St. Clair County.
King County, Washington, together with the Washington State Supreme Court, rounded out the list at No. 8.
In placing the three Illinois counties on the "Hellholes" list, ATRA rattled off a litany of reasons to back the selection.
The legal reform group said the three counties essentially serve as the epicenters of lawsuit activity and abuse in lawsuit-friendly Illinois.
They noted Cook County alone racked up about 161,000 new lawsuits filed in 2023, or about 47% of all lawsuits filed in Illinois state courts that year. The county, which covers the city of Chicago and many of the city's suburbs, is home to about 40% of Illinois' population.
Cook County is also home to the largest share of the so-called "nuclear verdicts" - or jury verdicts awarding $10 million or more to plaintiffs - in Illinois.
In the past 10 years, Illinois has ranked No. 6 among U.S. state court systems in delivering such verdicts against businesses, and placed in the Top 10 among U.S. states in 2024.
However, other "nuclear verdicts" have landed against businesses in Madison and St. Clair counties, as well, ATRA noted.
In 2024, for instance, St. Clair County jury ordered baby formula makers to pay $60 million to a family that blamed their child's health problems on alleged problems with the formula fed to the baby.
In May 2025, a Madison County jury delivered a $35 million verdict in an automobile crash lawsuit.
And in Cook County, juries handed plaintiffs verdicts with $20.5 million in a medical liability case and $10.5 million in a wrongful death case, ATRA noted in its report.
The enhanced chances of landing such jackpot verdicts have played a big role in making the three counties prime destinations for lawsuits, whether the claims be legitimate or less so, ATRA said.
Baby Formula Litigation
ATRA noted Madison and St. Clair County courts have served as ground zero to thousands of lawsuits against pharmaceutical and nutritional supplement makers Mead Johnson & Co. and Abbott Laboratories, the companies which produce Similac and Enfamil brand infant formula.
The lawsuits, seeking billions of dollars from the formula makers, claim the companies have allegedly sold their baby formulas even though they allegedly knew the products substantially increased the risk of babies developing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC).
NEC is a condition which results in the death of bowel tissue and can lead to severe illness and death in newborns, particularly if they are born premature. NEC carries a fatality rate of around 15-40% in infants suffering from the condition.
Many of the cases have been consolidated in federal court in southern Illinois. In recent rulings, a federal judge there has declared the lawsuits can't establish that a small risk of NEC should serve to allow trial lawyers to assail companies with massive payout demands, when they produce a vital product credited with saving the lives of at least 62,000 babies over the period from 2010-2022, alone.
The judge said plaintiffs must do more than argue that human milk is safer and better, and therefore, the companies should pay for selling a product riskier than human mothers' milk, when there is no viable alternative.
Despite such rulings in federal court, lawsuits against the formula makers continue to pile into court in Madison and St. Clair counties.
Together with courts in the neighboring city of St. Louis in Missouri directly across the Mississippi River, "Madison and St. Clair counties are home to a wave of litigation that threatens the health and lives of the most vulnerable among us: premature infants relying on life-sustaining baby formula," ATRA wrote in its report. "... This misguided litigation potentially jeopardizes a critical nutritional lifeline for at-risk infants."
ATRA further noted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the NEC Society have both urged courts to shut down the lawsuits, which ATRA said was based on risk claims "the science simply doesn't support."
"Courtrooms are not the best place to determine clinical recommendations for the care of infants," ATRA wrote, quoting the AAP.
Despite such calls for caution and restraint, an Illinois state appeals court in June 2025 agreed to allow thousands of cases to proceed in Madison County court. The court rejected assertions from Mead Johnson that the lawsuits had no business in the Metro East courts because the companies aren't based there and there is no other clear reason for the cases to remain in those courts.
The Illinois Fifth District Appellate Court, however, said the cases could remain because Mead Johnson couldn't show how much it earned in sales in Madison County and Abbott Labs had at least two employees who worked from home in Madison County.
The companies are looking to the Illinois Supreme Court to weigh in next in the controversy.
'Litigation Tourism'
However, ATRA noted that courts in Chicago and Madison and St. Clair counties should expect to see even more lawsuits with questionable connections, at best, to the county and the entire state, thanks to a new state law.
Earlier this year, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed SB328 into law over strenuous objections from the state's business community.
The law makes Illinois just one of two states to enact such so-called consent-by-registration laws, which allow companies to be sued in state courts for certain costly claims, whether or not the company has any real presence in the state or if the alleged injury occurred in the state or can be traced back to conduct in the state.
Business groups and other observers had warned such a law would open the gates to make Illinois courts a destination for a flood of out-of-state lawsuits, in a phenomenon dubbed by reform advocates as "litigation tourism." They warned it would only further harm Illinois' already addled economic and business reputation.
“Gov. Pritzker might as well post ‘Closed for Business’ signs at the state borders,” said ATRA President Tiger Joyce. “Dragging defendants into Illinois courts over unrelated harms sends a chilling message to job creators and puts local families on the hook for rising court costs. It’s unfortunate for Illinois families and small businesses whose taxes underwrite the courts.”
No Injury Required
ATRA noted the opening of Illinois courts to a variety of "lawsuit tourism" comes at the same time courts in Cook County, in particular, are already home to thousands of lawsuits under the state's stringent and potentially massively costly laws, supposedly protecting Illinoisans' biometric and genetic information privacy.
Those laws, known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act and the Genetic Information Privacy Act, have been used by trial lawyers to extract hundreds of millions or perhaps even billions of dollars in settlements from businesses targeted by class action lawsuits.
The payouts have been particularly enabled by a judicial standard in Illinois which doesn't require plaintiffs to prove anyone was ever actually harmed by conduct by their employers before targeting employers and other businesses with payment demands worth millions or even billions of dollars.
Such lawsuits have proven particularly lucrative for trial lawyers, delivering fee awards worth 15-40% of any amounts paid by defendant companies.
While Illinois lawmakers have enacted reforms to limit the reach of crippling payout demands from plaintiffs under the BIPA law, courts are currently weighing whether the new limits should also apply to hundreds of claims still pending in courts which were filed before Illinois lawmakers revised the law to make clear lawmakers did not intend for the law to be used as trial lawyers and courts had done to that point.
An appeal on that question remains pending before a federal appeals court in Chicago.
Asbestos lawsuits
And, at the same time, ATRA said Madison and St. Clair counties remain the country's leading destination for lawsuits from people claiming they contracted cancer from exposure to asbestos.
The counties, long a hotbed for such lawsuits, accounted for 40% of all asbestos lawsuit filings in the entire U.S. through July 2025.
In 2024, Madison, St. Clair and Cook county courts logged more than 47% of all asbestos filings nationwide, the report noted, with Cook and St. Clair counties recording sharp increases from 2023.
Each asbestos lawsuit filed names 85-90 businesses as defendants, the ATRA report said.
But still more asbestos lawsuits are expected, ATRA warned, after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled a change to Illinois law in 2019 obliterates the previous 25-year time limit in which to bring such claims.
The ATRA report further criticized Illinois laws, its court system and governments for, among still other alleged economy-harming legal abuses:
- Directly targeting energy companies for allegedly misleading consumers and businesses into using gas and oil products to fuel their homes, automobiles, factories and other essential structures and vehicles, allegedly worsening climate change; and
- Allowing an ever growing number of businesses producing vital medical products and essential chemical products to be sued for hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and potential judgments over the emission of ethylene oxide (EtO), which plaintiffs blamed for causing cancer in those living and working near certain sterilization plants and factories.
“Between local courts rolling out the red carpet for meritless claims and the legislature and governor opening the door to unchecked litigation tourism, Illinois’s civil justice system is in crisis," Joyce said.
