Illinois Supreme Court

The Illinois Supreme Court has amended its rules to provide a swifter means for achieving permanency and stability in child custody issues relating to divorce and parentage cases. The rules changes allow the appeal of custody issues even if other matters in those cases are unresolved. The situation often arises in marriage dissolution cases that can linger over issues of property, spousal support and other matters; or in parentage  cases where decisions affecting the rights and persons other than the child may be unresolved. A primary change amends Supreme Court Rule 304 to allow a trial court’s permanent determination of custody to be appealed even if other issues in the underlying matter remain unresolved.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that legislation requiring judges to reduce jury awards of noneconomic damages to victims of medical malpractice violates the separation of powers clause of the Illinois Constitution. In their amicus brief, the Chicago Bar Association and Illinois State Bar Association had urged the court to uphold its previous decisions in which the General Assembly attempted to reduce awards for noneconomic damages. ISBA President John O'Brien noted that this was the third time in the last 35 years that the Supreme Court of Illinois has considered and struck down legislative efforts to cap awards given by juries. "The Court has spoken on this issue in defense of our Constitution and the role of the judiciary and juries." ISBA brief on LeBron Illinois Supreme Court summary Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital

The Illinois Supreme Court announced today an expansion of its judge mentoring program designed to aid judges in the performance of their judicial duties. The new Peer Judge Mentor Program is the continuation of an initiative announced 13 months ago by Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts under Director Cynthia Y. Cobbs to improve public confidence in the courts and ensure judicial independence by improving the skills and performance of the Illinois judiciary. "Judicial independence is necessarily dependent upon public confidence in the operation of our courts," said Chief Justice Fitzgerald. "The Peer Mentoring Program, along with prior judicial performance initiatives announced by the Court, are prompted by a desire to produce the highest quality judiciary for the citizens of this state. They are designed to make a very good judiciary even better." The new initiative will train and assign judicial mentors to Illinois judges who seek to enhance their skills or performance. A judge's self-referral might be prompted by participation in the Court's Judicial Performance Evaluation Program, which was made mandatory for Illinois judges in the Supreme Court's 2008 initiatives. In addition to providing for self-referral, the new initiative also vests in a chief circuit court judge discretion to assign a mentor to a judge who could benefit from a confidential one-on-one relationship. Training of a corps of judicial mentors and administration of the mentoring program will be modeled after the successes of the New Judge Mentoring Program which the Court and the Administrative Office have conducted since 1998. That program was first initiated by then Chief Justice Charles E. Freeman and is considered a crucial tool in the training and development of new judges.

Cynthia Cobbs, Director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, has announced that the Third Judicial Circuit Judges voted to select Dean E. Sweet as an associate judge of the Third Judicial Circuit. Mr. Sweet received his undergraduate degree in 1973 from Eastern Illinois University and his Juris Doctor in 1976 from St. Louis University. Mr. Sweet is currently engaged in solo practice in Wood River.