BENTON – Kind words of a normally silent source sent Senior U.S. District Judge Phil Gilbert back to the most satisfying time of his career.
It happened at a hearing on March 23, as argument in an insurance coverage dispute ended.
Gilbert, planning to suggest settlement, said, “How long have I been a judge, 30 some odd years?”
His law clerk Tracy Prosser said, “Too long yet not long enough.”
Gilbert allowed the breach of decorum and said, “Oh yeah, I can’t retire because my staff doesn’t let me retire. They don’t want me to.”
Prosser said, “That’s right.”
Gilbert proceeded to set up a suggestion of settlement with sentiment.
“My uncle was an attorney in Chicago for 40 years with a firm, Wilson and McIlvaine, which doesn’t exist but did when I was in law school up there,” he said.
“He represented Marshall Field’s, Illinois Power, the sale of the Merchandise Mart in the late 1940s to Joseph P. Kennedy, and also did legal work for Sargent Shriver, who at that time ran the Merchandise Mart.
“He retired and came back to Carbondale to practice law with my father and his brother and me before he passed away.
“People asked me over the years, what’s been the most satisfying time of your career?
“The times I liked the most was when I practiced law with my father and uncle. I learned so much from those men.”
He said his uncle always told him a bad settlement is better than a good lawsuit any day of the week.
He said he has given that advice over the years, “because you never know what a judge is going to do. You never know what a jury’s going to do.”
Gilbert was born in 1949.
Senior district judges can stay on the bench without any age limit.
They don’t have to take cases they don’t want.