Block 37 judge meets burden of proof
(Crain's) — The judge who took away control of the Block 37 retail project from developer Joseph Freed & Associates LLC has spent most of her seven-year judicial career hearing much more mundane matters.
In one of the biggest rulings in a commercial real estate foreclosure case in more than a decade, Cook County Circuit Judge Margaret A. Brennan last month granted lender Bank of America Corp.'s motion for a receiver to oversee the development at State and Randolph streets.
Judge Brennan, 47, who is handling the $128-million foreclosure case, is a relative newcomer to the pitched battles between lenders and borrowers. Elected to the bench in 2002, the former Exelon Corp. litigator joined the Cook County Circuit Court's special foreclosure section barely a year ago, moving from a courthouse in west suburban Bridgeview, where she handled small civil cases and moving violations.
B of A filed its foreclosure suit against Block 37 in October. The litigation could test even a veteran jurist, but Judge Brennan has faced big challenges before.
Before she was elected seven years ago, the Chicago Council of Lawyers rated her unqualified, saying she lacked the "depth and breadth of experience" for the position.
But last year, when Judge Brennan ran for retention, the independent lawyers group gave her a measure of respect, calling her "qualified" and saying she "is considered to have good legal ability and is especially praised for her temperament and for her courtroom management skills."
Judge Brennan says she was pleased by the 2008 evaluation and said the 2002 rating didn't adequately take into account her litigation experience.
During court hearings, Judge Brennan has acknowledged that the Block 37 case is no run-of-the-mill foreclosure, even joking about the complexity of the litigation. She took the voluminous court file home on Halloween to read while answering the door to trick-or-treaters.
"I think I scared many neighborhood children away from the practice of law," she said during a Nov. 2 hearing, to laughter in the courtroom.
Judge Brennan declines to comment on the Block 37 case, in which the next hearing is scheduled for Friday. But she says that while foreclosure law is relatively straightforward, some cases are more complicated than others.
As a judge, "you have to be a bit more cautious, she says. "Every time you add additional parties or additional factors . . . it's an exponential factor."
She won her post after pulling off an upset in the March 2002 primary. She beat out a sitting judge, Robert Quinlivan, who was endorsed by the Cook County Regular Democratic Party and Chicago Tribune and was highly rated by the bar associations.
Adding to the odds, candidate Brennan raised just $9,535 for her campaign, compared to the $17,625 raised by then-Judge Quinlivan, state campaign finance records show.
In a tight three-way race, candidate Brennan garnered 198,828 votes, or 36.7% of the ballots cast, edging out Mr. Quinlivan, who retired this year as a lawyer with the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation.
"I think I was very lucky that day," Judge Brennan says.
Mr. Quinlivan said his defeat was partly due to the arbitrariness of judicial elections.
"A lot of it is driven by the name," he said, referring to some voters' preference for Irish last names.
Before the primary, the Chicago Council of Lawyers praised candidate Brennan's legal knowledge and integrity. But the group, which is sometimes prickly in its evaluation of judicial candidates, questioned her lack of experience, saying she had not "established a track record sufficient to warrant our confidence that she can run a courtroom" and didn't have "the depth and breadth of experience that the office requires."
Helping Judge Brennan overcome the rap by the Council of Lawyers was the better-known Chicago Bar Assn., which gave her a "qualified."
Also in her corner were five sitting Circuit Court judges who contributed a total of $400 to her campaign. Campaign contributions by sitting judges to judicial candidates are uncommon but not prohibited by ethical rules.
Most of the judges who contributed to Judge Brennan's campaign once worked in the city of Chicago's law department — where Judge Brennan began her career — or at the Chicago Transit Authority, says Judge Ronald F. Bartkowicz, one of the contributors and a former CTA attorney.
"There's a certain camaraderie," he says.
Before her election, Judge Brennan appeared before Judge Bartkowicz on several personal-injury cases while she was a lawyer with ComEd, and he also met her on social occasions, he says.
"I knew her personally. I knew her integrity and also her competency," he says. "In my view, that's the kind of person we like to have on the bench."
Also backing her campaign were colleagues at Exelon, with 17 employees donating a total of $1,375. Pam A. Strobel, an Exelon executive vice-president and chief administrative officer who resigned in 2005, co-chaired Judge Brennan's campaign, giving $200, records show. Randall Mehrberg, Exelon's general counsel who resigned in 2007, gave $100. Mr. Mehrberg is also the former top lawyer at the Chicago Park District.
A ComEd spokesman calls the contributions "not unusual."
The primary win was key, because candidate Brennan ran unopposed in the general election.
After the election, she labored in judicial obscurity until September 2008, when she moved from Bridgeview to the Daley Center when Chief Judge Tim Evans decided to increase the number of judges specializing in foreclosures to 14, from 10, in a move to help address the backlog of lawsuits filed by lenders.
Before her nine-month stint in Bridgeview, she spent four years handling bench trials of small commercial disputes in the Daley Center.
She says the experience in such high-volume courtrooms helped prepare her for the foreclosure unit, which has seen its caseload swell in recent years.
Judge Brennan received her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1984 before going on to IIT's Chicago-Kent College of Law. After getting her law degree in 1987, she was hired by the American Bar Assn., where she worked for a committee on prepaid legal services, according to a biography submitted to the Council.
In 1989, she went to work for the city of Chicago's law department, where she prosecuted traffic tickets and defended personal injury cases. She joined the ComEd legal department in 1994.
Judge Brennan lives in west suburban Indian Head Park with her husband, Robert J. Drummond, a personal-injury lawyer whose office is on the Southwest Side. They have two children, ages 10 and 13.
She has run four Chicago Marathons but says this year's race was her last. She complains about her running speed and prefers to compete in triathlons.
"I make up for my very slow running by being a better swimmer and biker," she says.
