Hon. James F. McCluskey, the Illinois State Bar Association’s immediate past president, will be honored at a reception hosted by the Illinois State Bar Association and Illinois Bar Foundation at Maggiano’s Little Italy, 240 Oakbrook Center, Oak Brook on Thursday, July 18 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. 

Tickets can be purchased online.

Before becoming an associate judge of the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, Judge McCluskey was a founding member of Momkus McCluskey, LLC. There he handled 60 jury trials as a commercial litigator. In addition to serving as the 2018-2019 ISBA president, Judge McCluskey served as president of the DuPage County Bar Association, and is a member of the Kane County Bar Association and West Suburban Bar Association. He is a Gold Fellow of the IBF. He received a bachelor’s degree from Elmhurst College, a J.D. from Northern Illinois University College of Law, and an L.L.M. from the John Marshall Law School.

The Illinois Department of Central Management Services is seeking an assistant labor counsel in Chicago.

Responsibilities of the position include performing technical  and  legal  work  in  the  areas  of  labor  agreements  and  arbitration;  representing  the  state  in arbitration  hearings  and  before  the Illinois  Labor  Relations  Board;  reviewing  resolutions and  disciplinary  actions; recommending administrative action on labor relations issues; and carrying out public speaking assignments at off-site locations.

ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews legislation in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. This week he covers toxic torts, the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, special interrogatory, the Equal Pay Act of 2003, and the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act. 

Tyria B. Walton has been appointed as a Cook County circuit judge in the First Judicial Subcircuit.

The appointment is effective June 25 and will conclude on Dec. 7, 2020, following the November 2020 general election.

Walton has served for over 20 years as an assistant public defender in the law office of the Cook County Public Defender, with a primary focus in first-degree murder defense. Over the past year, she has won her clients six not guilty verdicts in murder trials. 

Join us online from noon until 1 p.m. on July 23 to learn how to take your PowerPoint slides to the next level.

This one-hour live webinar includes topics such as working with videos and images, animation, transitions, and timings.

Read the July 2019 Illinois Bar Journal and get to know new ISBA President David Sosin. Sosin, a partner of the Orland Park firm of Sosin, Arnold & Schoenbeck, practices real estate, land use, and zoning law. He also serves as attorney for the Village of Crestwood just east of Orland Park. He has a long history of bar leadership, including stints as president of the Southwest Suburban Bar Association and the Illinois Bar Foundation prior to entering the leadership track at the ISBA, where his wife, Janet, recently retired as director of bar services after more than 30 years of service.

Sosin sees many needles to move during the 2019-20 bar year. Included among his top priorities are: attorney wellness, law firm succession planning, bar association leadership, and health insurance for lawyers and firms.

The Illinois Supreme Court issued five opinions on Thursday, June 20. The ISBA's panel of leading civil attorneys reviewed the opinions and provided summaries. In Nichols v. Fahrenkamp, the court took on the question of whether quasi-judicial immunity extends to court-appointed guardians ad litem in the context of the administration of funds from a personal injury lawsuit. The court dismissed a man’s class action lawsuit against Walgreens on the grounds that his claim was precluded under the voluntary payment doctrine in McIntosh v. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. In County of Will v. Pollution Control Board, the court upheld the board’s determination that groundwater monitoring regulations were unnecessary to protect groundwater from clean construction and demolition debris and uncontaminated soil fill operations. In Ward v. Decatur Memorial Hospital, the court weighed in on whether res judicata bars a plaintiff from refiling an action because he voluntarily dismissed the third amended complaint after a circuit court involuntarily dismissed several counts from the original, first, and second amended complaints in the initial action. The court addressed whether a court may impose sanctions in the form of attorney fees under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 137(a) against a plaintiff to compensate an attorney defending himself against a frivolous cause of action in McCarthy v. Taylor.

In 2016, a new game called Pokémon Go invited players to use their smartphone cameras to find and battle animated creatures the game layered on top of, or near, images of real objects displayed on their smartphone screens. Creatures could be hunted anywhere: on sidewalks, on pets, at restaurants, in parks, and on your neighbor's backyard patio. The game was a massive, worldwide success. But news stories proliferated of Pokémon hunters entering other people's property without permission, causing traffic accidents, and congregating in large groups at random locations.

Read Alexander Porter’s article, “Can You See It? Predicting an Augmented Future for Illinois Attorneys,” in June’s Illinois Bar Journal for an overview of how augmented reality likely will touch upon many legal issues, including trespassing, public and private nuisance, privacy, personal and financial data, terms of use, and intellectual property.

While retirement is usually planned, the sudden death or disability of an attorney requires contingency planning.

It’s especially important for private-practice attorneys to designate a representative on their ARDC registration documents or certify that they have made a similar designation in a succession plan or comparable agreement. The representative would be able to take limited fiduciary action if the designating attorney loses the capacity to run his or her firm, abandons the practice, or dies, thus preventing the negligence of client matters.

Attorney Howard Ankin discusses how to evaluate permanency in a workers’ compensation claim.