In the words of retired Post-Dispatch editor Pat Gauen: “I wonder what Jack DeLaurenti would think about this?” DeLaurenti, the former Bond County judge, was the first victim of what court observers have often called “The Vendetta.”
In 2022, the fight between local Republicans and the mostly-Democratic Madison County trial lawyers looks like a partisan fight, but – in 1980, when the trial lawyers first put Madison County judges on notice – it was strictly a fight between Democrats. But it’s also why the wins by Judges Amy Sholar, Chris Threlkeld, and Tim Berkeley were so important.
Judge Jack DeLaurenti might have called it “Redemption.”
The scene starts on a cold night in February 1982 at a Democratic Club candidate forum and has been immortalized by Granite City Press-Record journalist Georgeann McGee. It was only weeks after the famous blizzard of 1982, but it was also only about a year after “The Vendetta.”
Democratic candidate Michael Manning, who would get clobbered a month later by Senator Sam Vadalabene, was warning local Democrats about the results of the 1980 retention election.
Manning had participated with six other local trial lawyers in bouncing Judges DeLaurenti and Victor Mosele from their judgeships. He felt regret about participating in the anti-retention campaign. The group had accused Mosele of being “soft in sentencing criminals” and DeLaurenti of being “lazy.”
Years later, DeLaurenti would tell the Paul Hampel of the Post-Dispatch, that Mosele had actually “got[ten] crossways with a plaintiff attorney after that lawyer’s firm lost three personal-injury trials […] over 10 weeks in 1978.”
DeLaurenti, himself, “had been targeted because he had been Mosele’s ally and because he had not been ‘terribly cooperative with the power group of trial lawyers.’” Hampel labeled the unseating of the judges as “a watershed event almost 25 years ago known then and now as ‘the Vendetta.’”
It had gained significant attention of not only the judges, but also local newspapers. Manning told local Democrats that the newspaper was going to publish a series of articles detailing the “hidden industry” of personal injury suits in Madison County. He was going to be named in these articles and he was going to then call the FBI and IRS to spill the details.
What Democratic candidate Manning said next would be prophetic about the next 40 years of Madison County judicial history. He said Madison County had a “court system he view[ed] as giving a ‘small group of men with a lot of money’ the opportunity to make ‘a lot of money as fast as they can.’” He further warned: “There is no way industry [is] now going to come here…[they] know there is a controlled labor climate.” He even claimed that “large law firms are stacking the deck in the courtroom and elections.”
Tom Littlewood of Illinois Issues summed up the series of articles by the Post-Dispatch’s Bill Lambrecht later in 1982, stating that, to be endorsed by the Democrats in Madison County, a judicial candidate had to contribute $10,000 to the party, but this money was then recovered through campaign contributions from local lawyers, including “highly successful plaintiffs’ lawyers as the new political power brokers in the Metro East.”
In fact, personal injury suits were fueling “a multi-million dollar hidden industry,” with plaintiffs descending “from all over the country to sue in Madison County, where judgments average twice the state average.”
The retention campaign of 1980 had even caught the attention of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. The Commission charged that six attorneys “engaged in conduct involving fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” in their campaign against the two judges, even paying two-grand to “put an investigator on the tail of another judge, John Karns, who sometimes ruled against them.”
In 2004, reporter Hampel labeled the unseating of the judges as “a watershed event almost 25 years ago known then and now as ‘the Vendetta.’”
If you have only followed Madison County politics for the past 20 years, you might think that this fight between local trial lawyers and Republicans was partisan. But the “fight” has always been about the influence of the trial bar on the judges. The Vendetta.
Although the Supreme Court failed to discipline the six attorneys in 1987, much of the Manning Prophecy about a “small group of men with a lot of money” about to make “a lot of money as fast as they can” has proven true.
Of the six attorneys, one would become a major national Democratic power broker and class action filer in Madison County, before serving jail time for cocaine distribution. Another of the six would serve as lead counsel in Best v. Taylor Machine Works, the seminal case that brought down the 1995 Illinois tort reform legislation. Even another eventually partnered with a future State Senator and a future Madison County judge who left the bench to start the Madison County asbestos industry. Two of the attorneys served as presidents of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association.
And, just as Manning expressed regret over “The Vendetta,” one might consider the reflections of Morris B. Chapman, the storied dean of the trial bar who practiced personal injury law in Madison County for 65 years and participated in unseating the two judges.
In 2004, Chapman told the Post-Dispatch that local asbestos lawyers, in his opinion, were “not lawyers, they’re just people posing as lawyers […] They’re just business people, corporate types […] taking claims in and processing them in bulk, and making a ton of money and all for doing paperwork.” He further stated his “outrage” because “it denigrates my profession, the law profession.”
That’s the funny thing about prophecies, they don’t always turn out the way you think they will. Manning was sure right about the money and influence of the trial bar in the next 40 years of court history. What started as a fight among local Democrats launched a billion-dollar asbestos and class action industry, a statewide medical liability reform crisis, a storied multimillion-dollar Supreme Court election, and – most recently – a change in how local voters elect judges.
As changes in national partisanship and a resurgence in the local Republican Party have changed the attitudes of local voters, the influence of “The Vendetta” has started to wane. To solve this problem, local legislators convinced the Governor and state legislature to carve up Madison County into three subcircuits. Surely the trial bar could keep their thumb on voters’ choices for judges from a subcircuit made up of only the storied Tri-Cities area of Alton, Wood River and Granite City. It’s the area filled with voters that Morris Chapman labeled as industrial workers and pro-union groups.
And the new subcircuit law did something extraordinary in historical judicial gerrymandering: the statute put all three 2022 judicial seats into that Tri-Cities subcircuit.
Despite attempts by a bipartisan group of local county board members to file suit against the constitutionality of the new law, already-appointed incumbent Republican judges were forced to move their families from their homes in other parts of the county to establish residency in this new heavily Democratic subcircuit. This play by the trial lawyers to change the rules of electing judges in Madison County might be referred to as “The New Vendetta” on the local courts.
Alas, local voters – even voters in the Tri-Cities – showed the wealthy trial lawyers that they no longer fall for the trickery of 1980. Barry Julian, the wealthy asbestos lawyer (turned Florida retiree, turned Madison County Associate Judge, turned First Subcircuit candidate) even lost his candidacy for subcircuit judge by a couple hundred votes. And, if there was ever evidence that a New Vendetta wouldn’t pass the scrutiny of Madison County voters, a countywide non-advisory referendum asking voters if they want to elect judges only countywide passed with almost 88 percent of the vote.
So, what would Jack DeLaurenti, who regained his Bond County resident judgeship later in 1982 and served 20 more years before he passed in 2004, think about this 2022 subcircuit election?
Redemption.