Stephen Tillery

Member
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Stephen M. Tillery is the senior member of Korein Tillery, LLC.  He completed his undergraduate studies at Illinois College (B.A. magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in 1972.  Thereafter he attended Saint Louis University School of Law (J.D. magna cum laude, Order of the Woolsack, 1976).  While obtaining his law degree, Mr. Tillery served as law clerk to the Honorable James L. Foreman, United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. Following graduation, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable George J. Moran, Illinois Fifth District Court of Appeals.

In his career, Mr. Tillery has litigated individual and multi-party cases involving numerous areas of the law, including insurance coverage, securities, antitrust, pharmaceutical, environmental contamination, tobacco, products liability, patent infringement, qui tam/whistleblower, Federal Employers Liability Act, computer technology and consumer fraud.  He has handled, individually or as lead counsel, hundreds of complex civil cases, with more than one hundred cases resulting in multimillion dollar verdicts or settlements.  He was nominated for the American Association of Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year Award in 2003 and 2008 for his work.

Mr. Tillery has been appointed lead counsel in more than 30 class action lawsuits. In March 2003, Mr. Tillery served as plaintiff's lead trial counsel in a class action that resulted in a $10.1 billion verdict. Price v. Philip Morris Inc., 2003 WL 22597608 (Ill.Cir. Mar 21, 2003), rev'd, 848 N.E.2d 1 (Ill. Dec 15, 2005), reh'g denied, 846 N.E.2d 597 (Ill. May 5, 2006), cert denied, 127 S.Ct. 685 (Nov. 27, 2006).

Mr. Tillery has authored numerous articles and book chapters on trial practice. In addition, he has served as lecturer, moderator, and panel member at dozens of legal seminars relating to litigation and trial practice.  He was an adjunct professor at Saint Louis University School of Law for eleven years, and was Co-Director of the Advanced Trial Advocacy Program there from 1983 to 1988.

Mr. Tillery is admitted to the State Bars of Illinois and Missouri, and is admitted to all Federal District Courts of Illinois, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.  Stephen Tillery is a member of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, where he has been one of the elected Board of Managers since 1987, and for which he has chaired and served on numerous committees.

Mr. Tillery has been a long time supporter of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwestern Illinois and Meds and Food for Kids, a not-for-profit organization formed in St. Louis which operates to manufacture and donate a nutritionally-fortified peanut butter food source to malnourished Haitian children.  Mr. Tillery has traveled to Haiti several times, visiting clinics and the M&FK facilities in the northern part of that country.  The organization has saved literally thousands of Haitian children from starvation.  Mr. Tillery is a graduate of Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, a small, private liberal arts college of about 1,200 students.  He recently gifted Gillette House to Illinois College, donated a part of the new science center in the name of one of his past professors, and created a matching fund ($250,000) for student faculty enrichment programs.  The Gillette House is on the National Historic Register as one of the homes used by the Underground Railroad.  Since his donation of the Gillette House, it has been used as a library, a classroom, and as housing for visiting professors.  It sits one block from campus and is the oldest house in Jacksonville, Illinois having been built by Dr. Gillette, a famous abolitionist.

Mr. Tillery travels extensively, often climbing mountains in foreign countries. Click here to read a description of his recent experience of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa.