For Immediate Release:
April 23, 2008

Contact: Jason Held
312/644-8442 or

Joanne Doroshow
212/267-2801

Consumer Advocacy Group Condemns U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Biased Report Attacking Illinois

Chicago, IL – The Center for Justice & Democracy-Illinois (CJ&D-IL) today called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2008 state lawsuit liability rankings report, which attacks Illinois’ business environment, “biased, dishonest, and contrary to the evidence about the state’s positive business climate.” The Chamber criticizes the business litigation climate of Illinois based on the views of corporate lawyers, whose job it is to defend corporate wrongdoers.

“The U.S. Chamber seems absolutely indifferent to protecting the health and safety of Illinoisans or being honest about the real business climate in Illinois,” said Jason Held, Staff Director of CJ&D-IL.

Illinois businesses and manufacturing plants are doing very well. Illinois’ labor market has led all Midwestern states in job growth since 2004, according to U.S. Department of Labor and the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Even with the recent national unemployment rates rising Illinois’ job market has remained essential unchanged. Furthermore, almost three dozen Illinois companies made it on to this years Fortune 500 list of largest companies. Even in a downward economic cycle Peoria’s Caterpillar, Oakbrook’s McDonalds and Northfield’s Stepan Co., among others, all beat analysts 1st quarter expectations. Several third party sources have ranked Illinois and Illinois cities as some of the best places to locate a business. Site Selection Magazine has ranked Chicago as the top place to locate a business, three years in a row.

“The U.S. Chamber’s attack on our business environment is totally inconsistent with the facts here on the ground,” said Held. “This is why the FutureGen Alliance selected Matoon, IL as the hopeful site for their $1.5 billion project.”

According to Held, “The U.S. Chamber has for several years used its annual rankings to publicly, dishonestly, and inaccurately criticize the business climates of Illinois using a questionable survey of corporate lawyers including in-house counsel for major corporations. The Chamber spends nationally more money lobbying to take away citizens’ legal rights than any other lobby group in the country. These surveys reflect nothing more than the Chamber’s political agenda to limit legitimate these rights and accountability for corporate wrongdoers.

The Chamber also tags Cook County as one of the so-called “least fair” communities. Unlike the general population, approximately 95 out of 100 (or more) of top corporate lawyers – the type of individuals selected by the Chamber to rank jurisdictions - are white.1 According to the U.S. Census, Cook County had the largest black population, followed by Los Angeles County. Said Held, “It is one thing to refuse to attempt to survey a representative cross section of the legal community for this survey. But it is another thing to rely exclusively on the opinions of a group that has been specifically recognized as excluding minorities from its ranks. And when those polled then find disproportionate fault with jurisdictions in minority communities, the results of such a survey should be highly suspect.”

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NOTES

1 Alea Jasmin Mitchell, “Report on General Counsel of Color Leading Fortune 500 Companies,” Diversity & the Bar, Minority Corporate Counsel Assoc., May/June 2004.