‘Hi’ court ruling: Greeting doesn’t taint judge

SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Lake County woman who cordially greeted the judge in her divorce case in a fitness center parking lot did not forge a relationship that would taint decisions in her case.

The ruling came Thursday in the divorce case of John and Lisa O’Brien, a Lake County couple that began divorce proceedings in 2003.

A couple years later, John O’Brien asked that a different judge oversee the case, saying Lake County Judge Joseph Waldeck was too close to his wife to render a fair decision.

The basis for his claim?

In 2005, Waldeck and Lisa O’Brien exchanged “hellos” in the parking lot of a fitness center where the judge worked out and she occasionally did bookkeeping.

And John O’Brien claimed that in a 2005 hearing, Lisa started to leave the courtroom.

“John claimed that, as she did so, Lisa looked toward the bench and with her ‘head tilted’ in ‘a very cutesy way’ waved to Judge Waldeck,” Thursday’s opinion states. O’Brien said the action indicated a “very close relationship.”

But the Supreme Court ruled for Lisa O’Brien Thursday, saying the mere appearance of impropriety in the case wasn’t enough to suggest Waldeck needed to leave the case.

Writing the majority opinion, Justice Thomas Freedman said that if courts granted judge changes anytime there was any appearance of conflict — no matter how narrow — people would be constantly trying to switch judges and find a favorable one.

“An easier-to-meet standard would encourage the ‘judge-shopping’ that our previous decisions carefully strove to avoid,” Freeman wrote.

South Waukegan attorney Mark Vogg, who argued for Lisa O’Brien before the high court, said it was clear from the start that a simple greeting in a parking lot shouldn’t cause a judge to leave a case.

“The record doesn’t even show if Judge Waldeck even recognized her,” Vogg said.