 R.
Gerald Barris
Position: Shareholder
Direct Dial: 217-527-3334
E-mail: rgbarris@sorlinglaw.com
R. Gerald Barris is a trial lawyer with more than
thirty years' experience representing clients in central and southern
Illinois in a wide variety of complex litigation. He has represented
both plaintiffs and defendants with respect to business, construction,
environmental, product liability, personal injury, agricultural
chemical warranty, and health insurance issues.
Mr. Barris is past chairperson of the Civil Practice and Procedure
Section Council of the Illinois State Bar Association. He is a
barrister and past president of the Lincoln-Douglas Inns of Court.
Barris is an active member of the American Bar Association, Association
of Trial Lawyers of America, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association,
Defense Research Institute, and Illinois Association of Defense
Trial Counsel. For more than a decade he has been the author of "Original
Process and Appearance," Illinois Civil Practice Handbook,
Volume I, published by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal
Education. Mr. Barris believes his experience in representing both
plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases has made him a better
trial lawyer.
Mr. Barris has represented clients in the courthouses of most of
the counties in central and southern Illinois and has taken cases
to verdict in Illinois and eight other states. He has been lead
trial counsel representing major corporations in product liability,
toxic tort, and breach of warranty, construction, business, commercial,
and class action claims. He served as a regional outside counsel
for a major herbicide manufacturer in the Midwest and eastern United
States in the defense of toxic tort, crop damage, and loss-of-yield
cases. For twenty years he has represented one of the leading utilities
in central Illinois in the defense of electric line contact, construction,
personal injury, and property damage cases. He has also represented
employers against wrongful discharge claims of senior employees
and administrators.
Mr. Barris has represented plaintiffs in claims of personal injury,
products liability, closed head injury, traumatic brain injury,
and short term memory loss claims. During the past ten years he
has successfully litigated the insurance and HMO industries' use
of the terms "medically necessary," "experimental," "investigational," and/or "for
research purposes," in the denial of claims for treatment
of cancer, primary amyloidosis, myeloma, and other diseases with
new drugs, high dose chemotherapy (HDC), bone marrow transplant
(BMT), and peripheral stem cell rescue (PSCR). Mr. Barris has obtained
substantial settlements for plaintiffs against insurance companies,
HMOs and employee benefit plans (ERISA) in Illinois and the Midwest
for wrongful denial of claims and treatment, fraud, intentional
infliction of emotional distress and refusal to pay usual and customary
charges (U&C).
Mr. Barris believes in the value of Alternate Dispute Resolution
in certain cases. He has participated in ADR as an arbitrator
and representing both plaintiffs and defendants. After graduating
cum
laude from Denison University in 1962, Mr. Barris served as a
Ford Fellow and one of the first legislative interns with the
Illinois
General Assembly during 1962-63. He enlisted as a private in
the U.S. Army in 1963, and was honorably discharged as a First
Lieutenant
in 1966. Mr. Barris joined Sorling, Northrup, Hanna, Cullen & Cochran, Ltd. in 1972.
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