Michael Helfand

There is a basic premise under Illinois employment law that you can be filed at any time, for any reason, as long as it doesn’t violate a contract (e.g. you are in a union) or an illegal reason such as your race, religion, gender, age, etc.  So you can be fired for an unfair reason, a false reason or anything that isn’t illegal.  This includes being let go because you make too much money.

Say for example, a man has been at a construction job for 25 years. He is now 50 years old. He has always received excellent feedback from his supervisors and has moved up the chain of command as far as possible due to his work ethic and commitment to the company. Along with those steps up in the chain of command have come pay raises. Then on his 26th yearly review, he is given horrible feedback, and denied an annual raise. He later hears from his co-worker that they are starting to scale back the higher wage earners who happen to be mostly old-timers because they cost the company too much in benefits and salary. Giving poor employee reviews is simply the first step in trying to get rid of the people who make more than the younger people coming on board new with the company.

While it may seem like a no brainer that this is age discrimination, unless you have actual proof there is no case for legal action. Unfortunately, there’s no case at all unless it can be proven discrimination which is easy to suspect, but harder to actually prove. There are no laws about a company that lies to its employees during evaluation. There are no laws that guarantee you must be treated nicely or that everything that happens on a daily basis will be fair. There are laws and Court rulings that say a higher rate of pay and age are not correlated. Therefore, it isn’t a no brainer at all. In the above scenario, there is no evidence of age discrimination available without a statement that they are getting rid of you because you are too old or something else that actually proves what you suspect is actually true.

If you DO have actual evidence that you were terminated due to your age, race, gender or religion, please contact us to review the facts of your case. We can put you in touch with a qualified attorney in your area to help put your best interests first.  And if you just have questions, call us too. It’s always free to speak with one of our lawyers.

Most people are happy with their lawyer or at least not so unhappy that they want to sue them.  But when you lose a case you should win or pay a bunch of money and get no result, it’s not uncommon to want to sue.

The best reason to sue a lawyer and the one most likely to result in you getting money from a lawsuit is if the attorney failed to file a lawsuit in time. So if you hire them because you were rear-ended at a stoplight and they have two years to file a suit for you, if they don’t do it then you’d have a case against them.

That’s not the top reason people sue lawyers though. According to the ABA’s most recent Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims, “Failure to Know/Properly Apply Law,” was the most commonly alleged error committed by attorneys. Based on the data, this type of error accounted for more than 15% of all alleged errors. Basically it’s lawyers working on cases they don’t have a lot experience with or giving advice on things they know nothing about.

A lot of lawyers get calls for personal injury cases and think two things: 1. This will make me a bunch of money. 2. This will be a slam dunk.  So instead of referring the case to someone competent they try to handle it on their own.  They get in to it, are dealing with an experienced insurance adjuster and defense attorney and soon realize that they are in over their heads.

As a potential client you can minimize the chances of hiring a bad lawyer by choosing a law firm that has a narrow practice focus and can show a track record of some success.  Other red flags to look out for:

• Is there high staff or attorney turnover?  If that happens it means someone who is inexperienced could end up with your file or they’d have to pick up the pieces well in to the case.  Ask who will be primarily handling your case, how many other lawyers there are and how long they’ve been there.
• Are you working with a young lawyer who is given too much free reign by their boss.? Law school teaches you legal principles. It doesn’t teach you how to handle a case.  That comes from a good mentor or trial and error.  Don’t become the error in their trial.  I almost never recommend working with someone who has less than five years experience.
• Do they not return phone calls or generally act rudely to you? If that’s happening at the get go, why would you want to be with them.  It’s a bad sign.
• Are they really old?  I salute someone who is still practicing in their 70’s if they really love what they are doing, but more likely than not they are spending a ton of time in Florida or Arizona and if they are away your case will get neglected.

There are plenty of other red flags too, but these are the biggies to me.  Hopefully you never have to sue a lawyer and the best way to make that happen is by hiring the right one to begin with.

I hear a lot of stories that make me sad and some that piss me off.  There are a lot of people who contact me looking to get a lawyer referral who have gotten a raw deal by the justice system and want to sue over it.

In the last year or so I’ve had a ton of calls from people who want to sue for a wrongful arrest.  Unfortunately most of these cases go nowhere.

To get arrested in Illinois and charged with a crime there just needs to be probable cause.  That can be as simple as some random person saying they saw you rob a store or that you hit them.  It’s a really low threshold. And as a result innocent people get arrested all of the time in Illinois.

To convict you the State has to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is of course a much higher burden and allows some guilty people to go free so more innocent people won’t get convicted.

The problem is that if you are charged with a crime and can’t post bail, you can sit in prison for a long time.  That of course prevents you from working, being with your family and having any life.  It’s also very dangerous and can harm your health.  Even if you can post bail, being arrested can damage relationships and ruin your reputation.

So of course when you beat the charges whether winning at a trial or getting a good attorney who can get them dismissed, it’s natural that you’d want to sue.  Unfortunately it’s usually not a good case.

The people you could theoretically sue are the police and State’s Attorney. But if they have probable cause to bring charges, that is usually enough for them to avoid any liability for a lawsuit even if you think it should be obvious that you had nothing to do with the crime.

It’s typically only cases where you can prove a cop planted evidence or that the State’s Attorney hid evidence that would show you are innocent or something like that which would lead to a case. For example, in one case a guy was dating the ex-girlfriend of a police officer.  That officer was jealous and planted evidence on him to make him look guilty.  It was the intentional falsifying of the report that allowed there to be a case.

The better cases are the ones you wouldn’t want anything to do with and those are when people spend years or decades in jail after being wrongfully convicted.  Usually those cases are winners because DNA evidence shows that the police must have been lying about what they said happened and spending years in jail is a clear harm.

Either way, we are happy to talk to you for free if you think you might have a case or just want to know if you do.  We don’t promise a result, but do promise to always tell you the truth.