EAST ST. LOUIS – Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel and District Judge Staci Yandle shed 430 civil cases upon arrival of two fresh judges.
Rosenstengel, Yandle, and Senior District Judge Phil Gilbert carried extra loads for 18 months while two seats on the court remained vacant.
The U.S. Senate relieved the strain in September by confirming Stephen McGlynn and David Dugan.
“We’re really happy to have them on board,” Rosenstengel said on Oct. 14.
“We all worked together really well and did what we had to do.”
She shifted the load in an administrative order on Oct. 5.
She gave up 66 civil cases that didn’t involve prisoners, and Yandle gave up 69.
Rosenstengel wrote that the cases were “selected pursuant to established parameters.”
She gave up 138 prisoner suits, and took 20 from Gilbert.
Yandle gave up 157 prisoner suits.
Yandle and Gilbert, both in Benton, will keep their criminal cases and split future criminal cases on a 50-50 basis.
Rosenstengel will keep her criminal cases but will take no more for the moment.
“All new East St. Louis criminal cases shall be divided equally between Judge McGlynn and Judge Dugan until the criminal caseloads of the five district judges are approximately equalized,” she wrote.
East. Louis covers Madison County, St. Clair County, and nine other counties from Randolph to Fayette to Calhoun.
Benton covers 27 counties south and east, up to Marshall in Clark County.
Before any of the district judges can receive an assignment of a civil suit, parties to the case must decline jurisdiction of a magistrate judge.
Her current order leaves in place a rule she adopted last year for initial assignment of civil suits to magistrate judges.
She didn’t know how much relief the rule would bring, because a magistrate can’t preside without consent of the parties.
“It really helped tremendously,” she said.
She said she was pleased but not surprised at the number of parties who consented to magistrate jurisdiction.
In transferring cases, she said, “I wanted to extinguish a past culture of district judges getting rid of cases they didn’t want.”
When she joined the court, “they said it was random but it wasn’t,” she said.
She came up with parameters for what could or couldn’t be transferred.
For regular civil cases filed after July 1, 2018, no case with a motion pending more than 60 days would be transferred.
She said more cases met the criteria for transfer than they needed, giving judges an option to keep certain cases.
“On some of those we said, we’re going to see it through to the end,” she said.
She said she decided to assign new criminal cases to McGlynn and Dugan but not to transfer existing criminal cases to them, “to let them get acclimated.”
She said that as she and Yandle gave prisoner suits to McGlynn and Dugan, they also gave McGlynn and Dugan clerks who worked on those suits.
She said Gilbert, whose senior status allows him to turn down assignments he doesn’t want, carried a full load of civil and criminal cases.
“Throughout this he carried what Judge Yandle and I carried, and he doesn’t have to do any of this,” she said.
Some cases that bounced from veterans to rookies continued to bounce.
On Oct. 8, McGlynn recused himself from a suit claiming former Casino Queen owners tricked employees into buying the boat as a retirement investment.
McGlynn’s time as St. Clair County judge overlapped with that of current associate judge Jeffrey Watson, a defendant in the suit.
The court clerk assigned it to Dugan.
On Oct. 13, Dugan recused himself from a suit claiming Warrantech Corporation of Texas sells warranties and fails to provide any benefits.
Plaintiff Amy Jett of Glen Carbon proposes to lead a class action.
The clerk assigned it to McGlynn.
Neither rookie chose to hear a wrongful termination suit that Kristen Poshard filed against Madison County last year.
McGlynn recused himself on Oct. 8, and Dugan recused himself on Oct. 13.
The clerk assigned it to Gilbert.
One of Dugan’s cases, involving coverage for lockdown losses, apparently involves a family connection.
John Simmons’s firm, which represents the plaintiff, advised him that it represents Harold Dugan in a legal matter.
Ted Gianaris of the firm wrote, “We do not see this as a problem, but we thought we should raise it with you.”