Seeing a growing backlog of personal injury cases, Judge John T. “Jack” Keleher helped establish and implement the Mandatory Arbitration Program in the Circuit Court of Cook County and became its first supervisory judge in 1990.
The program, in which minor cases were referred to one of 30 arbitrators — attorneys or retired judges paid a per diem — was quickly successful, with 55 percent to 77 percent of each month’s cases for its first six months being settled either by the litigant or by the litigants accepting the arbitrator’s award, according to a 1990 Tribune story.
“It made a huge difference and immediately reduced the backlog of cases,” said Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sidney A. Jones, who in the early 1990s was a supervisory judge in the program. “Even before the ball got rolling, Jack did an enormous amount of groundwork. He labored hard and diligently, screening and evaluating hundreds of cases earmarked for the program.”
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Mr. Keleher, 91, formerly of Hillside and Elmhurst, who served on the bench from 1977 until stepping down in 1993, died of natural causes Thursday, Nov. 13, at Sunrise of Willowbrook, an assisted-living facility.
“We were surprised at the (program’s) success rate because these were old cases, and the older a case is, the more difficult it is to settle,” Mr. Keleher told the Tribune in 1990. “Based on national studies, we had hoped for a 50 percent rate.”
One of the program’s biggest strengths is that it allows judges in the Law Division to focus on the more serious personal injury cases.
“There has been a wide acceptance of the program among attorneys because they can make money on a case four years before they would if they went to trial,” Mr. Keleher told the Tribune in 1990. “Also, the average award is about $3,500, and a case that size is not worth an attorney taking up three days of his time to go to trial.
“On the other side, insurance companies like the program because they can settle a case for about $3,500 now instead of paying $5,000 just to an attorney over a five-year period to handle the case.”
During the 1960s, Mr. Keleher was active in the civil rights movement. As president of the Elmhurst Human Relations Council and chairman of the DuPage County Conference on Race and Religion, he introduced Martin Luther King Jr. at a community event at Elmhurst College in 1966.
“Jack was a champion of the underdog, who fought for fair housing, equal pay and many other social justice causes,” said the Rev. Bill O’Shea, who during the 1960s was an associate pastor at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Elmhurst and got to know Mr. Keleher. “His clear-cut convictions almost always led to specific solutions.”
The son of Irish immigrants and the eldest of five, Mr. Keleher was born and raised on the North Side. After graduating from Quigley Preparatory Seminary, he attended Loyola University for a year before enlisting in the Navy at the start of World War II. He trained as a communications specialist at the University of Notre Dame and Harvard University before serving for two years at Pearl Harbor.
Upon his military discharge in 1945, Mr. Keleher resumed his studies at Loyola, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1947. After earning a law degree from Loyola in 1951, Mr. Keleher started his own practice in Chicago, while also serving on the teaching staffs at Loyola and Kent law schools.
He was appointed an associate judge in Cook County in 1977 before being elected to the Cook County Circuit Court in 1988.
Mr. Keleher is survived by his wife of 67 years, Dorothy; five sons, Brian, Brendan, Terry, Miles and Neil; five daughters, Susan Keleher-Kleina, Patrice, Janet, Sheila and Colleen; a sister, Sister Jean Keleher; and 18 grandchildren. Services were held.