On the passing of Judge Ronald C. Riley

I assume the Illinois Judicial Council will have an announcement when arrangements are finalized. This post may be updated accordingly.

I was saddened to read yesterday, on Facebook, of the passing of former Judge Ronald C. Riley.

At the time of his retirement (in 2008 or early 2009) Judge Riley was Presiding Judge of the Sixth Municipal District. But I had trials before him when he served in the Law Division and, later, in Chancery.

Actually, we never got the first juror sworn in the Law Division trial -- but it's that case that left me with an indelible, and positive, impression of the man.

Judge Riley's chambers in the Law Division had a small table set perpendicular to his desk. He used it as a conference table. And, if I don't remember the geography of the room exactly, I do remember that there would be heck to pay if one failed to push one's chair back under the table when standing up. Riley was (if I recall correctly) a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and he conducted his courtroom with a brisk, military air.

I recall exactly Judge Riley's remarks when I and my opponent arrived for trial that morning in September 1992. "Gentlemen," he said, "the motion courts are downstairs. The Appellate Court is upstairs. We do trials here."

(In those days, the Appellate Court still occupied the top floors of the Daley Center.)

The reason why this seemingly innocuous, though accurate, remark is so seared in my memory is that I had brought with me a very large stack of motions that I wanted to have addressed before we even thought about impaneling a juror. Mine was a first party business interruption insurance case arising from a truck accident -- and the insured had already received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation from the carriers that insured the truck driver responsible for the collision. While the case had been pending for nearly six years before it went out to trial, a great many questions of law (concerning policy construction and damages) had yet to be resolved. Not for lack of trying on my part, mind you -- but motion judges seldom got reversed for denying or deferring motions.

Looking back after nearly three decades, I suppose the pile of paper I produced at that moment may have been fairly modest in comparison to the enormous stacks of pretrial motions I have since seen in, say, medical negligence cases. But, for me, at the time, it was a huge bulk of paper, and I felt like I was starting at the bottom of a very deep hole when I produced my pile and pushed it forward.

To my eternal relief, and gratitude, his initial remarks notwithstanding, Judge Riley gave my pile of paper respectful consideration. We were at least two days, and I think three, with an intervening weekend, working through the issues -- and, eventually, the issues were narrowed sufficiently for the parties to reach a settlement. Judge Riley did not negotiate that settlement; that was achieved by one of my partners, working with someone from my opponent's firm, and the adjuster, sitting in the courtroom. Or somewhere. But Judge Riley's willingness to wade into that thicket of paper and make considered decisions, made that resolution possible.

Thank you, sir.

Am Assistamt Attorney General before he was elected to a countywide vacancy in 1988, Judge Riley was a former Chair of the Illinois Judicial Council.