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Often maybe more often than not your legal research needs are immediate. You need answers now, not next week.
A new service gives you that sort of instant gratification, at least for selected ISBA books. Now you can immediately view, print, or download a pdf version of selected titles simply by using your Visa, MasterCard, or American Express credit card. And you save on shipping costs to boot.
To find these electronic FastBooks, visit the ISBA Bookstore at <https://secure.isba.org/bookstore/>, where you'll find the entire collection of ISBA books and monographs. The 
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The six FastBooks thus far are How to Use a Residence Trust to Save Estate Taxes, ISBA Model Residential Sales Contract, Guide to Illinois Statutes for Attorneys' Fees, Understanding HIPAA: A Compilation of Articles Published by the ISBA between 2002 and 2004, and the just-released Illinois Decisions on Search and Seizure. Watch the ISBA Bookstore for more titles; they're on the way.
By Jim Covington
Director of Legislative Affairs
With adjournment scheduled for May 27th, the end of spring session is near. The following is a quick summary of bills moving in the process.
Medical malpractice. It is the conventional wisdom that Speaker Madigan will offer a bill that will cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. How high or low the caps will be and how it will be structured is unknown.
Real estate filing fees. Senate Bill 75 (Martinez, D-Chicago; Hamos, D-Evanston) authorizes a $10 filing fee on all real estate documents with $9 going to the affordable housing fund and $1 to the county's general revenue fund. The money will subsidize landlords to charge affordable rent for low-income tenants. It has passed both chambers.
Respondents in discovery statute. Senate Bill 1893 (Silverstein, D-Chicago; Fritchey, D-Chicago) amends the respondents in discovery statute to allow an extension from the original six-month period to be granted only once for up to 90 days for (1) withdrawal of plaintiff's counsel; or (2) good cause. But the court may still grant additional reasonable extensions from this six-month period for a failure or refusal on the part of the respondent to comply with timely filed discovery. It also creates a new summons form to be served on these respondents. Senate Bill 1893 applies to causes of action pending on or after its effective date, which probably be Jan. 1, 2006. It has passed the Senate and is in House Judiciary I Committee.
Medical records. Senate Bill 1907 (Cullerton, D-Chicago; Mathias, R-Buffalo Grove) amends the examination of records statute in the Code of Civil Procedure to expand those who can request these records to include "any person, entity, or organization presenting a valid authorization for the release of records signed by the patient or the patient's legally authorized representative." It also permits them to examine the records as well. It has passed the Senate and is on second reading in the House.
The Home Repair and Remodeling Act. House Bill 2594 (Delgado, D-Chicago; Cullerton, D-Chicago) requires a contractor who prepares or presents a written offer for home repair and remodeling to a consumer to advise the consumer before the contract or agreement is accepted and executed of the presence of any contractual provision that requires the consumer to: (1) submit all contract or agreement disputes to binding arbitration in place of a hearing in court before a judge or jury; and (2) waive his or her right to a trial by jury. The consumer must be given the option of accepting or rejecting both the binding arbitration clause and the jury trial waiver clause before the contract or agreement is accepted and executed by the consumer.
The contractor must also have the right to reject the proposed contract or agreement if the consumer rejects either the binding arbitration clause or the jury trial waiver clause, or both.
The failure to advise a consumer of these provisions will void each clause that has not been accepted or rejected and signed by the consumer. It is on second reading in the Senate after passing the House.
Computer security. House Bill 1633 (Fritchey, D-Chicago; Silverstein, D-Chicago) creates the Personal Information Protection Act, which is modeled after a California law. It amends the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act to make it a violation of that Act to violate the Personal Information Protection Act. It requires "data collectors" to notify their clients or patients of any "breach of the security of the system data" that may reveal personal information. It has passed the House and is on second reading in the Senate.
We must address the current atmosphere in which our courts operate - whether state or federal - and what can only be called a decline in civility and respect toward our justice system. Our worsening atmosphere is as deadly a weapon against an independent judiciary as is any individual assailant.
American Bar Association president Robert J. Grey, Jr, calling on members of Congress to refrain from undue criticism of judges based on disagreements with individual decisions
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Some of the brightest surgeons come out of a six or seven year residency program with virtually zero medical legal training aside from what they have heard in the hallways. They don't understand the concept of causation and they are utterly unfamiliar with the statutes that guide the practice.
Plaintiff's attorney Samuel Davis, who teaches malpractice law at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons
Editor
The pall of Shame
Sentencing guidelines for newspaper misconduct seem to vary with venues. Reporters and editors are not licensed, nor is obeisance required to an enforceable code. Thus, anomalies occur when atonement for journalistic sins is appropriate.
Twice in one week last month, the crime-busting Chicago Tribune published photos of Joe Citizens and identified them as mobsters of organized crime. One has already filed suit, and the other just wants his unwanted fame to go away.
If an investigation of these egregious blunders is in progress, it is moving with the speed of dark. Other than hasty retractions, there has been no official comment from the Tower or op-ed clarification by the "public editor."
By contrast, the Detroit Free Press last month summarily suspended a sports columnist who filed copy in advance with reference to something that subsequently didn't happen. Two former basketball players told him they planned to attend the NCAA finals, but they didn't.
The column, in which the writer even described the attire of these two no-shows, ran April 3. He chanted his mea culpa in the next column April 7, and then the axe fell. The incident was probed internally by an investigative reporting team, and pilloried by news media pecksniffs.
In legal parlance, this misdeed was akin to a prosecutor being suspended for allowing hearsay to creep into the trial record. Yet it has been called "deceptive," a "journalist's version of hell," and even "professional malpractice" by critics of the craft.
The sentence was "unspecified discipline" for the writer probably time served and four culpable colleagues. He lamented, in his resurrection column May 1, "people who once called themselves friends preferring to act as my judge and jury."
Management continues to have his body of past work exhumed and sifted for prior factual liberties. "The boundless joy I always felt for this newspaper business has been socked in the stomach," he wrote.
The fact that he is Mitch Albom, author of eight books ("Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" have been best-sellers for years), a radio and television panelist, song writer and pianist, may provide some solace. But the punishment doesn't appear to have fit the crime.
In Detroit, a popular 20-year veteran with two master's degrees and a wall full of awards gets treated like a felon for a harmless assumption. His professional embarrassment, compounded in black and white by the publisher, should have been sufficient.
While in Chicago, two ordinary people get smeared pictorially as gangsters but nobody appears accountable. Those stone walls at the Tribune, where a strict code of ethics has been a presumptive way of life, can be pretty thick sometimes.
Ethics: The good and the sad
The appointment of Sheila Simon to the Illinois Gaming Board was reported in the April issue of the Bar News and hailed widely as a breath of fresh air in what has been a foul environment.
Then somebody reminded the governor that the Illinois Riverboat Gambling Act prohibits Gaming Board members from serving on any other public body for compensation. Simon, an SIU law faculty member, serves on the Carbondale City Council.
The governor's reaction was to suggest to the General Assembly that the ethics provision be changed. No way, cried legislators and editorial commentators. The law was written as it was to prevent otherwise inevitable conflicts of interest.
Simon's first priority is her Carbondale obligation, and that's apparently where she plans to serve. Good for her.
But fie on the minority of 50 state representatives who voted in vain to tinker with the law, no matter how tempting it was to find a way for Simon to apply her ethical persona wherever else it may be needed.
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Mike O'Brien was a great pal, a fine lawyer in St. Charles and a good judge in Kane County, but he had a problem that jeopardized both careers. His published interest in the Lawyers' Assistance Program sprang from demons that he strived to overcome.
A guy's guy, Mike drove to Pennsylvania in 1975 to deliver an Illinois House resolution to Nellie Fox, who was dying of cancer. He also took a prized baseball that the White Sox infielder had autographed 18 years before. "Give it to some kid, Nellie," he told Fox, who was too sick to sign another.
Years later, an alcohol-related ethical lapse became an editorial cause, leaving the court little choice but to banish Mike from the bench in 1995. He died in a highway crash last month (see Epilogue). He is missed for who he was, and for what he could have been.
Bar Foundation allocates $103,000 in April grants
The Illinois Bar Foundation board voted April 16 to award grants totaling $103,300 to 27 charitable programs throughout the state.
The largest grant is $10,000 to the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, based in Alton, to seed a capital campaign for purchase of a building. The agency provides legal assistance in 65 counties through eight branch offices and a centralized legal advice and referral center.
The Center for Prevention of Abuse in Peoria will receive $8,500 for a part-time court advocate to help violence victims in Tazewell County obtain orders of protection.
Four organizations of Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) will receive funds. They are McLean County, $5,800; Champaign County, $3,000; Will County, $2,500, and Kane County, $2,000.
Grants of $5,000 each were voted for Administer Justice in West Dundee, Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation, Evanston Community Defender Office, Illinois Judges Association Judicial Intern Opportunity Program, Latinos Progresando of Chicago, Midwest Workers Association Advocacy Program of Chicago, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago, and Special Education Advocacy Center in Palatine.
Sarah's Inn in Oak Park will receive $3,500. Grants of $3,000 each go to Center for Disability and Elder Law in Chicago, Centro Romero in Chicago, DuPage Legal Assistance Foundation in Wheaton, and Pro Bono Advocates in Chicago.
Grants of $2,500 will go to Cabrini Green Legal Aid Clinic and Friends of Battered Women and Their Children, both in Chicago. Those receiving $2,000 grants are Lawrence Hall Youth Services and Public Interest Law Initiative, both in Chicago, and Youth Service Bureau of Rock Island County.
The Branch Family Institute in Evergreen Park will receive $1,500, and Abraham Lincoln Council of Boy Scouts of America in Sangamon County gets $1,000.
For information about applying for future grants, or making tax-deductible contributions to the Illinois Bar Foundation, call (312) 726-6072, ext. 233, or access the Web site, www.isba.org/ibf.
IBF seeks award nominees
The Illinois Bar Foundation is accepting letters of nomination for two of its highest honors: the Award for Distinguished Service to Law and Society, and the designation of Honorary Fellows.
The Distinguished Service Award, last presented in 2002 to R. Michael Henderson of Peoria, honors individuals for exemplary contributions to the profession that include involvement with the Bar Foundation and the Fellows program.
Abner Mikva was inducted last year as an Honorary Fellow in recognition of his distinction as a lawyer whose public and professional career has set an example to which others may aspire.
Nominations may be submitted by Wednesday, June 1, to the Illinois Bar Foundation office, suite 910, 20 S. Clark St., Chicago 60603. Each should con