Illinois Judge Answers Questions In 'Kane County Chronicle' Suit

By: E&P Staff Under a judge's order Thursday, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Thomas answered deposition questions he had balked at last month in an unusual libel case brought against the Kane County (Ill.) Chronicle and its regular freelance columnist Bill Page.

The fact that Thomas had refused to answer 15 questions at last month's deposition -- including a query on whether it is fair to criticize public figures like President Bush -- was first reported Friday in a Chicago Sun-Times article by staff reporter Eric Herman.

This unusual case of a sitting state Supreme Court justice bringing a libel suit has been the subject of E&P editorials, most recently in the March 2006 edition.

Thomas is suing Page and the Chronicle over three columns Page wrote in 2003 that essentially asserted Thomas had played politics in handling an ethics charge brought against Kane County's attorney general, Meg Gorecki. In one column, Page opined that Thomas was a political opponent of Gorecki who should have recused himself in the case. In another, Page alleged that Thomas supported a lighter punishment for Gorecki "in return for some high-profile Gorecki supporters endorsing" a political ally of Thomas for a judgeship.

In a controversial decision, an Illinois appellate court refused the newspaper's request to take depositions of the justices involved in the ethics case, ruling that judge's have an "absolute deliberative privilege" that, critics warn, means any judge's conduct while deciding a case, no matter how questionable, must remain secret.

Thomas used a somewhat similar argument during the April deposition, invoking his position as chief justice as reason not to answer certain questions, Herman reported.

Among the questions Thomas refused to answer was one about what medicines he is taking. In the deposition Thomas said had been "terrifically stressed out as a result of" the allegations in Page's columns. "You kind of feel like your blood pressure's going up."

But in response to a question by a lawyer for the Chronicle, the Sun-Times' Herman reported, Thomas -- a former kicker for the Chicago Bears football team -- said he had had "a casual conversation" about it with a cardiologist friend at a Bears game, but never made a doctor's appointment.

Thomas also refused to say whether it was fair for other columnists to criticize political figures such as Bush or U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. "I'm not going to be trapped into talking about them and what might be fair to them," he said, according to the Sun-Times report.

While Thomas apparently answered the questions Thursday, the deposition "was partly under seal and was not available," the Sun-Times reported.