Practice News

Businesses are only as good as their people, but recruiting employees and letting them go are both fraught with legal pitfalls. In the March Illinois Bar Journal, employment lawyers explain how you can help your clients and your own firm avoid HR missteps.

The Illinois Supreme Court has announced the implementation of a mandatory judicial evaluation program for all Circuit and Associate judges in the state as the final part of a series of initiatives to improve public confidence in Illinois courts. The program is designed “for the purpose of achieving excellence in the performance of individual judges and the improvement of the judiciary as a whole,” states Supreme Court Rule 58 which the Court amended Tuesday to establish the program as mandatory. “This is an extremely important step in making a good judiciary even better,” said Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride. “There are more than 900 judges in Illinois and under this program every one who serves at the Circuit Court level will be evaluated by those who appear before them and work with them. This evaluation is for the purpose of enhancing the performance of Illinois judges and improving public confidence in the state’s courts.” The results will be confidential, shared only between the judge and a facilitator, also a judge or retired judge who has been specifically trained in the process. The program will be administered under a contract with the National Center for State Courts and will be monitored by the Supreme Court Judicial Performance Evaluation Committee.

Our panel of leading appellate attorneys review today's Supreme Court opinions from Civil cases Speed District 802 v. Warning, Ries v. The City of Chicago, Johnston v. Weil, Kaufman v. Schroeder, M.D., LaSalle Bank National Association v. Cypress Creek 1, and Criminal cases People v. Baez and People v. Comage.

CIVIL

Speed District 802 v. Warning

By Alyssa M. Reiter, Williams Montgomery & John Ltd. The reviewing courts have struggled with this case, resulting in a divided Illinois Supreme Court reversing the (divided) appellate court judgment and setting aside a decision of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (“the Board”). At issue was whether the SPEED District 802 (“the District”) violated two sections of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act (“the Act”) when it failed to renew the teaching contract of Warning, who was a nontenured probationary teacher.

The news of the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman and 18 others, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, who died, and the arrest of an apparently mentally disturbed unemployed 22-year-old for the acts, horrified all who heard it. Media reports that a few months earlier his college had suspended the man and notified him and his parents that he would not be allowed to return without a letter from a mental health professional saying that he did not pose a threat to himself or others, suggests a question for lawyers: How should you advise clients who tell you they're worried about their child, or someone they know, and fear that a similar trage­dy might ensue? Helen Gunnarsson asks the U of C's Mark Heyrman in the March Illinois Bar Journal.