The Inevitable Collision of Politics and the Law, with Keith Hebeisen

Keith Hebeisen has been winning since the beginning. A legend in the medical malpractice space in Illinois, Hebeisen has his head on straight and his practice at Clifford Law Offices highly focused. He represents individuals going up against hospitals and doctors in a multitude of matters that vary in scope and complexity.

Starting with a win on his very first case, the decorated and celebrated trial lawyer has been smashing verdicts for his clients for forty years now. From product liability to toxic torts to transportation, Hebeisen knows this arena like the back of his hand. He’s seeing it change in interesting ways, too.

According to Hebeisen, Covid-19 has affected the way juries approach cases. “Jurors are much more open-minded in medical malpractice cases,” Hebeisen says. “I’ve found that resistance to the notion of finding a healthcare provider or an institution responsible has really gone down.”

Hebeisen is driven by a love of the work and a commitment to his clients – folks who have wrongfully suffered injuries or death due to wrongful practice.

“I'd say there's a common denominator in all my cases, which is that I do really care about what happens to my clients and I try to do what's right for them,” says Hebeisen. “I try my hardest to tune out the noise and focus on the goal.”

Hebeisen keeps an eye on the bigger picture and believes politics comes with the territory for any true advocate. Hebeisen has been an active member of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association for many years, where he served as President from 2005 to 2006.

“You really can't take this stuff for granted, politics are involved,” says Hebeisen. “If you're not involved, things will come up out of nowhere and blindside you, and all of a sudden you've got a big problem with the laws in your state.”

Hebeisen is an active leader in numerous other bar associations and even occasionally takes to the state capital to advocate for and against proposed legislation and help shape policy. As someone who uses the law to seek justice, he understands the importance of the legislature in shaping our governance. For Hebeisen, it’s important to fight for our rights before they’ve been stripped from us.

As he says, “Rights get taken away, and then it's really hard to get them back.”

Lawdragon: How did you decide to become a lawyer?

Keith Hebeisen: I became interested in being a lawyer kind of late in the game. When I graduated from college, I had no intention of going back to school. I had taken the LSAT and actually had a really good score on it, but I spent four years in the concrete construction business after I got out of college. I made a good living; I enjoyed the lifestyle. I didn't take work home with me, and life was grand until the early 1980s when the economy was messed up and construction dropped. I needed to figure out something else to do, and I ended up applying to law school. I thought that maybe I could be a good lawyer. I initially thought about being a criminal defense lawyer. That was my fantasy when I started law school. But early on, I really got torts into my system. I found it interesting learning about theories of liability and people receiving compensation when somebody harmed them through negligence. Then getting into how to prove these things with the rules of evidence, I really liked that.

LD: How did you start working with Bob Clifford?

KH: It was in my second year. My torts professor called me and a classmate up after class and asked if either of us was interested in working with Bob Clifford, who was then an associate at the Offices of Philip Corboy. I was kind of nervous, but I said yes. I met with Bob and ended up working for him. He was a great guy to work for. He was very smart. He knew what he was doing, he liked to empower young law students to do things and really learn how to become a lawyer instead of just doing busy work. Although I had a lot of that too. It comes with the territory.

LD: Was he a mentor to you?

KH: He has been my main mentor, one of three significant mentors in my life. I worked in Corboy's office for a year as a law clerk. So I consider him a mentor too. And another lawyer that I worked for after that, Al Hofeld, was a mentor to me as well. They all had different styles, and I think I was blessed to be exposed to those three different styles because there were things that I learned from each one of them. But ultimately, you have to make things work for yourself. It's been very valuable to me in developing my own successes.

After 40 years, I do get cases that are similar, but generally speaking, every case you get you have to learn something new about medicine.

I think what I got from all three of my mentors is the importance of working very hard and always being prepared – to be more prepared than necessary and always be more prepared than your opponent. Don't take shortcuts, be the best you can. While training at Corboy's and Hofeld's offices, I had the benefit of seeing both of them try cases when they were at the top of their game. It was a little intimidating sometimes to see what they were doing in a courtroom, but I learned a lot. I didn't try any cases in my year at Hofeld's office. I did a lot of discovery and depositions. It was heavily tilted toward medical malpractice, but not exclusively. Now I've gotten to the point now in my career, that's all I do.

LD: How did that come to be?

KH: A combination of choice and circumstance. I was in the right place at the right time and I like doing it. I like the challenges and I think I'm pretty good at it. Before I tried a case by myself, I tried four cases with Clifford, including his first $1M verdict in 1987. Then, in September of 1987, I tried my first case by myself, without having a more senior lawyer with me. It was not a big value case, and it was not complicated. It was a short trial – the perfect case for a young lawyer to start with. It was a no-offer medical malpractice case against a very experienced partner in a prominent defense firm and I got a $75,000 verdict. It wasn't a big case but it was a tough case. So it was great – I won my first case. Not too long after that, I had another med mal trial, in a no-offer case that was against another partner in that same big defense firm – another very experienced guy. This time, not only did I get a good verdict, I got a verdict in excess of the insurance coverage. That's when I started getting my wings, so to speak.

LD: What are some of the challenges you enjoy about med mal?

KH: After 40 years, I do get cases that are similar, but generally speaking, every case you get you have to learn something new about medicine. You have to actually understand how it works and what they're going to say on the other side. You have to know the medical terminology and be able to do combat with witnesses in a professional manner when you take depositions. These are people who went to medical school and have been practicing for 20 years, and you’ve got to go toe-to-toe with them. That's one of the biggest challenges. I can lean on my experience with other medical issues, and I talk to my own experts to get educated, but eventually, I'm flying the airplane myself and I have to be able to put all that stuff together.

LD: Tell us about a recent case.

KH: I just received a verdict in the Lopez v. DuPage Medical Group. It was another no-offer case. A 56-year-old ended up with a heart transplant because his primary care doctor was not ordering tests that would've revealed that he had triple vessel coronary artery disease – a significant disease that required intervention. So instead of having bypass surgery, which would've been the proper treatment for him, he didn't get treated until he went into end-stage heart failure six months after the first visit with his doctor. At that time, the only option was to have a heart transplant. Fortunately, he was able to get a heart transplant within a month of when he was admitted to the hospital.

So he ends up with a heart transplant with all the problems that go along with that instead of having a bypass procedure. If there are no complications with bypass surgery, you go on to live another 10 to 15 years. That's what the difference was for him. Their experts said that the doctor didn't do anything wrong by not referring him for additional tests, but they also admitted that the tests would've disclosed that he had the disease. But if they had diagnosed it six months before, they wouldn't have been able to do a bypass because he didn't have adequate targets and therefore he was going to need a heart transplant anyway.

The verdict was $6.35M and now there are post-trial motions pending. One of mine is to impose what's called an additur, which means increasing the amount of the jury verdict to cover all the medical bills. So the verdict might go up, and we're in the throes of that right now.

LD: You tried a case a while back where you were awarded a $100M verdict for your client. Can you tell us about that?

KH: Well, first of all, I want to give credit to my partner Sarah King, who actually did a huge percentage of the work on that case. I was sitting in on depositions and brainstorming and participating, but she did most of the heavy lifting to put the case together. So it was in pristine shape by the time we went to trial.

This was a case involving an injured child with a single mom. The baby was brain-damaged at birth and had a lot of needs. So we really needed to do everything we could to make sure that she had the funds to pay for things that wouldn't be paid for by insurance. This kid was going to need lifetime care, so the first goal was to try to settle the case and they came in way low on that. So we ended up going to trial.

Rights get taken away, and then it's really hard to get them back.

The trial was about a month long. There were four of us lawyers in total. I negotiated my role with my colleague in the case at the beginning. I didn't care who did the opening statement, but I wanted to have the closing argument. I got the opportunity and I asked the jury for $175M. When I first started practicing law, nobody would ever ask for that amount of money. I felt very confident and comfortable that I was not being outrageous with what we were asking for based on what the evidence was. And it was possible that they could award less money, which is what they did. The number is a phenomenal number, but what was more important to me was what we were able to do for that mom and her kid. Shortly after that trial, we were able to almost immediately improve the quality of both of their lives through our efforts.

LD: That’s great. What do you love about this work?

KH: I'd say there's a common denominator in all my cases, which is that I do really care about what happens to my clients and I try to do what's right for them, even though sometimes it's not what I would want to do for my ego. I try my hardest to tune out the noise and focus on the goal. I'm trying to accomplish the best I can for this client, no matter what.

LD: What can you tell us about your work with the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association?

KH: I'm a Past President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. Its sole purpose is to preserve the right to trial by jury in Illinois. A lot of that involves fundraising for politicians. It involves going down to Springfield, our state capital, lobbying against bad bills and in favor of good bills.

You really can't take this stuff for granted. Politics are involved. If you just put blinders on and practice and try to make a lot of money, fine. But in the meanwhile, if you're not involved, things will come up out of nowhere – they'll blindside you, and all of a sudden, you've got a big problem with the laws in your state. That's happened all over the country. Some of the trial bars in other states just don't seem to get that. I know that because I'm also involved with national politics. I’m on the Board of Governors of The American Association for Justice. I was the chair of the state delegates years ago. I've been on the Board of Governors almost forever, since then. I have insight into the big picture in the country. I know what states the trial bars are active in – and to the level they should be – and others that are not. And there's a relationship between the tort laws in the states with the trial bars that are active and those that are not. Rights get taken away, and then it's really hard to get them back.

LD: Are there any trends that you're noticing in your practice at the moment?

KH: I've noticed that now in the 2020s, jurors are much more open-minded in medical malpractice cases. They’re more able to believe that negligence does occur. Juries seem to be more able to understand that and respond with a fair verdict for plaintiffs. It certainly wasn't like that 30 or 40 years ago. It was a hard sell to get people to buy into that concept. They were resistant to it.

I think in some way Covid-19 had a lot to do with that. I can't prove that, but my belief is that people started looking at life differently. All of us did, in our own way, after going through Covid-19 and the aftermath. People were sitting around, they weren't working, they couldn't go anywhere – they were thinking about their life and about how screwed up it all got. I have to believe that’s had a lot to do with the shift I’ve seen in jurors' attitudes. I’ve found that resistance to the notion of finding a healthcare provider or an institution responsible has really gone down.