With just three days left before the statutory deadline, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has yet to indicate whether he'll sign a controversial bill that would allow tort claims against employers in asbestos-disease cases.

Mark Selvaggio

But that hasn't stopped business groups from continuing to urge the governor to veto Senate Bill 1596, according to a news report.

“Most workers' compensation insurance companies will probably double or triple their rates on every single company in order to get rid of liabilities in Illinois, and leave the state,” Mark Selvaggio, president of Selvaggio Steel, told The Center Square news site. “This law, if allowed to proceed, will put insurance companies in a position where they will never be able to close any case they ever have because they’ll never know if there’s going to be a complication.”

SB 1596 passed the Illinois legislature March 20. The governor has 60 days to sign it into law or veto it. If he does nothing, the bill becomes law without his signature.

The bill has been welcomed by worker advocates because the state's current workers' compensation and occupational disease law has a 25-year statute of repose. After that, occupational disease claims — comp and tort — are barred, according to the 2015 state Supreme Court ruling in Folta v. Ferro Engineering.

Some business and insurance groups have worried that the bill would make tort claims retroactive, but a few defense attorneys have suggested that the measure contains no mention of retroactivity, and that has been frowned on by the courts, anyway. If courts hold that to be the case, and SB 1596 becomes law, it could mean that lawsuits over asbestos won't be allowed until 2044.

Still, if Pritzker signs the bill, it is expected to face a number of challenges in court in coming years, lawyers have said.

"This new law, if used as its advocates intend it to be used, will revive claims in the civil suit arena that were already barred by the Workers' Compensation Act and the corresponding Illinois Occupational Disease Act’s statute of repose," Bradley Smith, partner at Chicago defense firm Keefe, Campbell, Biery and Associates, told the news site. "Employers should be ready to attack those potential claims aggressively from the onset. This is because the constitutional viability of applying this law retroactively is questionable at best."