Certainly everyone is entitled to an opinion, but what is lost in the din is that the only opinion that matters is that of the jury. Twelve people were selected by both sides in this case as being a cross-section of Rachel’s peers. And they were. Some were young, others were retired. They represented various races and ethnic groups. The eight women and four men were of various religious backgrounds.

But they all came together and took four weeks out of their lives to listen to all of the evidence and come to an agreement as to what was fair and just. Their sound judgment is being questioned by public sentiment apparently fueled by the public relations machinery of the defendants. A meeting was held Wednesday with the public relations people of Metra and the Illinois Civil Justice League, a group of corporate interests attempting to pass tort "reform" in this state, huddling to figure out how to position Rachel as the new "poster child" for their efforts.

I should point out that I never asked the jury for anything close to $600 million. When the jurors, instructed not to read newspapers or watch television or listen to radio reports on the trial, heard of the $600 million figure when it was all over, all of them expressed astonishment at the misrepresentation. I enumerated the various elements of Rachel’s damages, as required by law. Disability, disfigurement, pain and suffering, past and future wage lost, past medical expenses, future medical care - my recommendation, a mere suggestion to the jury, totaled $66 million for a young woman who lost one leg and whose other leg is so severely injured she is confined at times to a wheelchair.

The courts require a "reasonable relationship" between the compensatory award and punitive damages. I advised the jurors that - should they decide to award punitive damages at all - they should consider a multiple from zero to eight times their compensatory award. Other courts have upheld awards in the range of four to 12 times the compensatory damages, and I chose a figure in the middle. From that, the media extrapolated a $600 million headline.

For more than 17 hours, jurors went over every witness’ testimony. They reviewed the figures like IRS accountants with calculators in hand. Jurors interviewed afterward clearly indicated that sympathy did not enter into their decision for, if it had, the award would have been much higher.

The railroads, in their bitter response, forget their total indifference to the 14 previous reported incidents in the five years before Rachel’s event of other commuters being caught in the railroad’s doors and dragged, events that went ignored and inevitably led to Rachel’s tragedy. A jury apportioned 95.5 percent blame to the railroads’ ignoring safety procedures.

But rather than acknowledging that the civil justice worked and the triers of fact determined the truth, the defendants insist on rehashing their own version of the facts.

It’s clear: The jury believed Rachel. She was pinned to the train doors. She didn’t realize she was in any danger until the train started to move. For that they assessed 4.5 percent of fault to her.

But the lion’s share of the blame was the railroads’. And for them to contend that a fully insured judgment is going to be paid by fare increases is a public relations ploy to get the public sentiment against a woman who properly pursued her legal remedies and received a just result. The defendants’ response is an insult to the public’s intelligence and, more important, it’s an insult to the 12 people who took the time to evaluate her case.

And for tort reformers to use this case as a platform for their unjustified stance to change the civil justice system, arguing that $8.8 million would have been sufficient is ludicrous. First of all, under the tort law passed in 1995 by the General Assembly, as dictated by special corporate interests and later overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court, any award by the jury automatically would have been reduced to $3.3 million, including punitive damages. That’s not even enough to cover her past medical bills and the future medical expenses that even the defense admitted would be necessary for Rachel during the next 56 years of her life expectancy.

And who are these special corporate interests trying to determine a fair amount? None of them was even present in the courtroom, much less for a month. Since when are they the deciders of fact?

The civil justice system worked. It may be an imperfect system, but it allowed everyone a chance to be heard. Twelve people found against the railroads, and now the railroads’ corporate marketing executives are doing exactly what was tried to be argued at trial against Rachel. They are looking to stir public sympathy.

It wasn’t allowed in Rachel’s case, and it should not be tolerated now.