Steven Puiszis to Weigh in on the Crisis in the State Judicial System on VoiceAmerica

Chicago — Steven M. Puiszis, a well-known and highly experienced trial attorney and mediator with a wide-ranging litigation and trial practice, will appear on lead live internet talk radio show VoiceAmerica on Tuesday, October 8, 2013, to discuss the funding reduction crisis facing the State judicial system that’s impacting citizens and businesses alike.

Mr. Puiszis will join a panel of other top experts including State Supreme Court Justice Christine Durham of the Utah Supreme Court, and Trial Attorney and Court Administrative Expert Daniel J. Hall of the National Center for State Courts. The panel will talk about how funding reductions have impacted 47 states since 2010, and has resulted in widespread service reductions, reduced operating hours and layoffs in some jurisdictions. In some smaller communities, courthouses are even closing for good. In addition, because state courts handle 95 percent of all cases filed and processed each year, the crisis is also affecting everything from resolving custody disputes, to upholding business contracts, to civil litigation.

Mr. Puiszis is the author of “Illinois Governmental Tort and Section 1983 Civil Rights Liability,” and municipal and civil rights law are two of the primary areas of his practice. He has handled a variety of claims in state and federal court on behalf of various units of state and local government. He successfully represented the Governor and several other state officials in a civil rights action where the plaintiffs initially sought to certify a class of all developmentally disabled adults in Illinois who failed to receive residential Medicaid services on a timely basis. He also successfully defended the Secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services and several other state officials while serving as lead counsel in a class-action trial involving Illinois' Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act (SVP) Program. That matter involved a variety of constitutional challenges brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Illinois’ SVP Program.