Tillery
BELLEVILLE – Stephen Tillery, ready for trial on a claim that weed killer paraquat caused four plaintiffs to suffer Parkinson’s disease, won the biggest judgment ever in an American trial and lost it at the Illinois Supreme Court.
In 2003, after a bench trial, late Madison County judge Nicholas Byron awarded more than $10 billion to a class of cigarette smokers Tillery represented.
The few American cases with higher judgments, such as state tobacco litigation in the 1990s and Deepwater Horizon explosion suits, ended in settlement.
Tillery retreated from the field of class actions after the state Supreme Court and Congress restricted them, though he has returned as ambitious as ever.