One Illinois County Holds 42% of America's Mesothelioma Filings. A 1995 Court Order Explains How.

Madison County, Illinois leads US asbestos litigation, and the reason is not its location. It is a court order.

The earlier version of this report described the anomaly, 882 filings in one county, and left it there. The actual explanatory finding is mechanical and primary-verifiable: the Third Judicial Circuit has run its entire asbestos docket under a single Standing Case Management Order since November 17, 1995, last revised September 5, 2024, and that order guarantees any plaintiff with a mesothelioma diagnosis an automatic expedited trial setting.

That one rule, applied for three decades, is why this county’s docket is 92% mesothelioma, and why those 809 mesothelioma filings amount to 42% of every mesothelioma case filed in the entire United States in 2024.

The Mechanism: One Order, One Judge, One Fast Lane

The Madison concentration is administered, not accidental. The Third Judicial Circuit’s Standing Case Management Order Governing the Asbestos Docket, originally entered November 17, 1995 and carried forward through a revision dated September 5, 2024 and signed by Chief Circuit Judge Stephen Stobbs and Associate Judge Andrew Carruthers, creates the office of Presiding Asbestos Judge with control of the entire asbestos docket.

The order’s load-bearing provision is the expedited-setting rule: a diagnosis of mesothelioma qualifies a case for an expedited trial setting, with an age preference. Mesothelioma is the highest-value disease category in asbestos litigation. A venue that guarantees it the fastest path to trial is a venue that the firms handling those cases will route them to.

Illinois venue law is the second half of the mechanism. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-101 and 735 ILCS 5/2-103, an action may be filed where a defendant has its principal place of business or where the tort occurred. National asbestos defendants have Illinois business contacts, so an out-of-state plaintiff can file in Madison if a named defendant sold products into Illinois. The standing order makes Madison attractive; the venue statute makes it reachable.

The Numbers, Corrected

The prior version’s filing history was invented. It presented a ten-year trend with a 2020 peak of 1,168 and 1,201 filings in 2022. Per the KCIC report it cited, Madison’s actual recent series is 979 in 2022, 909 in 2023, and 882 in 2024, a steady decline, not the volatile decade curve the old chart drew.

Madison was rank 1 nationally every one of those years. In 2024 its 882 filings were 22% of the national total of 3,931, and its 809 mesothelioma filings were rank 1 and up 2.4% year over year even as national mesothelioma filings fell 1.7%. St. Clair County, the adjacent Illinois venue, ranked second nationally with 820, so the two counties together held about 43% of all US asbestos filings.

The Firm Side of the Mechanism

The standing order pulls; a small set of firms push. Per the KCIC 2024 firm table, the national plaintiff bar is highly concentrated, and the firms that file most of the country’s mesothelioma cases concentrate them in Madison.

The Gori Law Firm was the rank-1 US filer overall, 788 cases, about one in five US asbestos suits, and is the Madison local anchor. Simmons Hanly Conroy was the rank-1 US mesothelioma filer at 381, the majority filed in Madison County. KCIC attributes Madison’s 2024 mesothelioma increase mostly to Simmons Hanly Conroy and Maune Raichle Hartley French and Mudd. The expedited-setting order is the reason those filings have a destination; the firm concentration is the reason there are so many of them to route.

What Limits It

The venue is not unbounded, and the limit is a named Illinois Supreme Court case. In Fennell v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 2012 IL 113812, decided December 28, 2012, the Illinois Supreme Court held that a trial court abused its discretion in denying an interstate forum non conveniens motion where a Mississippi plaintiff’s work and exposure occurred outside Illinois, and that an out-of-state plaintiff’s choice of an Illinois forum is entitled to far less deference.

Fennell is the controlling Illinois limit on out-of-state forum selection in this docket. The prior version of this report miscited it as a 2018 Seventh Circuit case; it is a 2012 Illinois Supreme Court decision, and getting the court and year of the one case that constrains this venue wrong is exactly the failure this rewrite corrects.

A Closing Thesis

Madison County’s lead is the most explainable number in US asbestos litigation, once you stop treating it as geography. A 1995 standing order, still administered by a single Presiding Asbestos Judge, guarantees mesothelioma plaintiffs the fastest trial in the country. Illinois venue law lets out-of-state plaintiffs reach that courtroom. The handful of firms that file most of the nation’s mesothelioma cases send them there. The result is a single county that is 92% mesothelioma and holds 42% of every US mesothelioma filing.

That is the answer the prior version never gave, because it was busy drawing a ten-year chart out of numbers the source did not contain. The national venue-migration investigation carries the country-wide concentration and the year-over-year movement; this report carries the Madison mechanism that the national table cannot, by itself, explain.