Court Opinion

ID: 9729448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:36:04.778653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:58.257557
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE FREEMAN, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The majority concludes that an attorney’s obligation to follow the Rules of Professional Responsibility should not be the foundation for a claim of retaliatory discharge. I note that, in resolving this issue, the majority relies primarily on our 1991 decision in Balla v. Gambro, Inc., 145 Ill. 2d 492 (1991), which involved an in-house attorney’s attempt to sue his corporate employer for retaliatory discharge after the attorney advised his employer that it failed to comply with certain federal regulations promulgated by the Federal Food and Drug Administration. I dissented in Balia, arguing, inter alia, that the court’s confidence in the Rules’ existence as a shield from an employer’s illegal acts was unwise and misplaced. I warned then that the court’s decision did “nothing to encourage respect for the law by corporate employers nor [did it] encourage respect by attorneys for their ethical obligations.” Balla, 145 Ill. 2d at 516 (Freeman, J., dissenting). Seven years later, these concerns unfortunately still ring true, as the facts in this case sadly demonstrate. Nevertheless, my colleagues today now extend the Balia holding to law firms and their employee attorneys. Thus, one class of employees in this state, attorneys, has been stripped of a remedy which Illinois clearly affords to all other employees in such “whistle-blowing” situations. Today’s opinion serves as yet another reminder to the attorneys in this state that, in certain circumstances, it is economically more advantageous to keep quiet than to follow the dictates of the Rules of Professional Conduct. For this reason, and the reasons expressed in my dissent in Balia, I would answer the certified question in the negative and would affirm the judgments of both the appellate and circuit courts.