SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Legal Newsline) - Clients who are ordered to pay punitive damages can sue to recover the money from their lawyers, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled, rejecting arguments state law and public policy protect lawyers from being subject to punitive damages awards.
Illinois Section 2-1115 states that “no punitive damages shall be allowed” in medical or legal malpractice cases. The St. Louis law firm Sandberg, Phoenix & Von Gontard argued that prohibited Midwest Sanitary Service from recovering $625,000 in punitives a jury awarded a former employee in a wrongful-dismissal case. Midwest sued its lawyers for malpractice after the verdict, blaming it on various mistakes including failing to designate defense witnesses in time and eliciting harmful testimony from a state official during cross-examination.
A trial court rejected the law firm’s argument, as did an appeals court. And on certification to the Illinois Supreme Court, the state’s highest court affirmed that legal malpractice plaintiffs can recover punitive damages if they stem from the underlying lawsuit. The Sept. 22 decision sent the malpractice case back for trial.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines “punitive damages” as “damages on an increased scale, awarded to the plaintiff over and above what will barely compensate him for his property loss” that are intended “to punish the defendant for his evil behavior or to make an example of him.”
The Illinois Supreme Court decided in 2006 that legal malpractice plaintiffs couldn’t sue for punitive damages they claim they would have won but for their lawyers’ incompetence. In that case, the court paid particular attention to a California Supreme Court decision in a lawsuit against the prominent class-action firm Lieff Cabraser, in which that court found it would be illogical to punish lawyers over speculative punitive damages, especially since the lawyers weren’t liable for the underlying tort.
Allowing such suits would burden courts by making it harder to reach settlements where plaintiffs believe they lost out on some speculated amount of punitive damages, the Illinois Supreme Court court added. But in this case: “Midwest is not speculating but is certain about the amount of punitive damages it paid in the underlying action, and it now seeks to be made whole in the legal malpractice action,” the court concluded.
As for public policy, the court said, “there is no risk of a societal cost—potentially subjecting attorneys to a greater financial liability or consumers running the risk of not being able to obtain legal services or obtain recovery from legal malpractice,” because the damages here are known and already paid.