On May 17, 2019, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed legislation eliminating the state’s 25-year statute of repose under the Workers’ Compensation Act for latent diseases, overturning the prominent Supreme Court decision in Folta v. Ferro Engineering, 2015 IL 118070 (2015), which established clear precedent that an employee’s exclusive remedy lies under either the Workers’ Compensation or Occupational Diseases Act. Under the old law, an employee did not have a civil tort cause of action against their employer. This new law now creates an exception to the traditional exclusive remedy provision that has been part of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation system for over 80 years.
The legislation, introduced in February of 2019 as SB 1596, was recently signed into law as Public Act 101-0006. It was passed by the Illinois Senate by a vote of 41-16 and the Illinois House by a vote of 70-40. Effective immediately, the law amends the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act and Workers’ Occupational Diseases Act to allow employees to sue their employers in civil tort actions for latent injuries that manifest more than 25 years after occupational exposure.
The major question looming over asbestos litigation is whether plaintiffs’ attorneys may attempt to apply Public Act 101-0006 retroactively to pending cases filed before the date this legislation was enacted on May 17, 2019. There are two recent Illinois Supreme Court decisions that hold that a plaintiff’s cause of action that was already time-barred under the limitations period contained in a previous version of a statute...
