Partner
P: 312-578-7653 | deckler@pretzel-stouffer.com
Pat Eckler builds superior client relationships to address their litigation needs and applies his wide range of skills to aid in resolving disputes.
Pat Eckler builds superior client relationships to address their litigation needs and applies his wide range of skills to aid in resolving disputes. Pat handles a variety of civil disputes in state and federal courts across Illinois and Indiana. His practice has evolved from primarily representing insurers in coverage disputes to managing complex litigation in which he represents professionals, businesses and tort defendants. His record of success includes numerous summary judgments, several successful trial results, and multiple favorable appellate results.
In addition to representing lawyers, Pat represents design professionals, accountants, and insurance brokers. His commercial litigation experience involves complex contract disputes and defense of class-action lawsuits. Pat’s coverage practice for insurers and the insured involves commercial general liability and personal lines policies, issues involving the duties to defend and indemnify, bad faith and the application of exclusions. His tort defense work involves representing spans the representations of product manufacturers and distributors, trucking concerns and premises owners. Drawing on his experience as a college basketball coach, Pat has also represented a coach before the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
Pat is active in the organized defense bar both at the state and national level. He is a committee chair, columnist and board member with both the Illinois Association of Defense Trial Counsel and the Professional Liability Defense Federation. He focuses his recent work for the IDC on legislative activities, and he has spearheaded efforts to defeat or modify legislation that would harm civil defendants, insurers, and corporations and is working to defeat a proposed change to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules that would eliminate evidence depositions. He also advocates for legislation that would level the playing field in civil actions between plaintiffs and defendants.
Pat has published extensively in professional journals on a wide range of topics, including legal ethics, attorney-client privilege and Illinois and Federal civil procedure. He has also published on substantive areas of law ranging from products liability and toxic torts to premises liability and claims against accountants. Special attention in his writings has focused on issues related to completing settlements, including contending with Medicare Secondary Payer requirements and Illinois’ prompt payment statute, 735 ILCS 5/2-2301.
Pat studied ancient Egyptian language at the University of Chicago, where he earned his degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. After completing his undergraduate studies, he taught history and coached high school and college basketball for three years before attending law school at the University of Florida. In his final semester of law school, Pat served as a certified legal intern with the Public Defenders’ Office of the 8th Judicial Circuit, where he represented defendants in misdemeanor criminal cases.
“ABA Model Rule 8.4(g) threatens lawyers’ free speech,” Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, For the Defense, July 29, 2020, Donald Patrick Eckler.
Pretzel & Stouffer partner Donald Eckler was installed as president of the Professional Liability Defense Federation, a national organization of lawyers and claims professional who handle the defense of professional liability matters.
October 2020 | Firm News
Sommer Luzynczyk, Brian Henry, and Donald Eckler served as faculty members and speakers at the 2020 North Central Region Trial Academy and Virtual Trial Tactics sponsored by the Illinois Defense Counsel, Wisconsin Defense Counsel, and Defense Trial Counsel Of Indiana. The biennial program is designed to give attorneys with limited trial experience an opportunity to obtain intensive practice experience in ...
October 2020 | Firm News
Partner, Donald Eckler publishes, “Effort to End Intrastate Forum Non Conveniens is Bad News,” for the March 12, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, edition. Donald will be publishing regularly for his column, For the Defense.
March 2020 | Firm News
Pretzel & Stouffer partner, Donald Eckler, together with Alice Sherren published an article in the Professional Liability Defense Quarterly entitled “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Adverse Domination and Legal Malpractice Claims.” The article discusses the adverse domination theory as an exception to the statute of limitations in relation to legal malpractice claims and, ...
January 2020 | Firm News
Pretzel & Stouffer partner, Donald Eckler, together with Alice Sherren published an article in the Professional Liability Defense Quarterly entitled “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Adverse Domination and Legal Malpractice Claims.” See the article below. The article discusses the adverse domination theory as an exception to the statute of limitations in relation to ...
January 2020 | Firm News
Two motions for summary judgment granted for two clients in two counties on one day. Donald Eckler, Matthew Ligda, and Jonathan Federman obtained summary judgment for two insurers on a claim of bad faith in one case and an alleged violation of the Consumer Fraud Act in another. The bad faith case arose out of ...
July 2019