The family of the judge who sentenced former Ald. Edward M. Burke to two years in prison for strong-arming developers to retain his law firm once hired Burke’s firm to help their company fight City Hall and hold onto a lucrative city deal, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
Land and Lakes Co., a northwest suburban business owned by the family of Chief U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, had filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago in 1994. It was seeking to stop the city from shutting down its landfill on the Southeast Side for violating a moratorium on expanding or opening new landfills that Burke had helped pass.
As part of the company’s clout-heavy legal team, it hired Burke’s firm, Klafter & Burke, court records show.
There’s no record that the longtime powerhouse Chicago City Council member himself was involved in the civil case.
But court records show his wife, now-retired Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, was one of the landfill owners’ lawyers. At the time, she was an attorney in private practice, specializing in child-welfare matters.
Responding through an intermediary, Kendall said she had been unaware until contacted by the Sun-Times that her family had hired Burke’s firm as part of the legal team in their court battle with City Hall in the mid-1990s.
The judge — a former federal prosecutor who was appointed to the judiciary in 2006 and recently was elevated to the post of chief judge — said she has no reason to believe that her family’s hiring of Burke’s law firm would have posed a conflict of interest for which she would have needed to recuse herself from hearing Burke’s corruption case.
But, in response to questions from the Sun-Times, she said she sought an opinion from the general counsel for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts — the administrative arm of the federal court system. She said the opinion she received this month, more than two months after sentencing Burke, was that she would not have needed to step aside from the case.
Asked in writing for an interview, Kendall instead had Thomas Bruton, the clerk of the U.S. District Court in Chicago, respond to questions, addressing some and ignoring others.
In part, Bruton wrote: “Chief Judge Kendall was unaware of any involvement by retired Illinois Supreme Justice Anne Burke in that litigation, some thirty years ago, at any point during the recent trial, proceedings and sentencing of former Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, her husband … If any party, or anyone else, had raised the issue, the litigants would have been free to ask for Chief Judge Kendall’s recusal and she could have considered the request. None of the litigants raised any issue or made any such request, nor did anyone else.”
Neither of the Burkes responded to requests for comment. Lawyers for Burke — who is due to report to prison by Sept. 23 — wouldn’t comment. Nor would the U.S. attorney’s office, which prosecuted Burke.
Bruton also wrote: “As you are likely aware, Chief Judge Kendall was not required to recuse according to the Codes of Conduct for United States Judges because nothing in the Codes of Conduct requires a judge to conduct research to determine if the spouse of an attorney who provided legal representation for her family members later appears as a criminal defendant some thirty years later.
“Upon receipt of your inquiry, and out of an abundance of caution, Chief Judge Kendall contacted the Office of General Counsel at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and confirmed with the counsel overseeing the Codes of Conduct Committee that she does not, and did not, have an obligation to recuse from the case because there was no conflict (even if she had been aware, which she was not).”
Bruton’s letter also said Kendall “has never been employed by Land & Lakes Company, and she is not a director. Like many children, Chief Judge Kendall chose to pursue an entirely separate career path from her parents. Nevertheless, ever since becoming a Judge, Chief Judge Kendall has listed her parents’ businesses on her recusal list.”
Kendall and her husband have a $1.9 million mortgage on their home in the north suburbs that Cook County records show came from a trust fund her family had set up in the 1970s. She didn’t respond to questions about whether the trust fund’s money came from Land and Lakes.
Kendall also is a shareholder in Prairie Recreational Developments, Inc., a company headed by her mother, according to the judge’s economic interest statements. She didn’t respond to questions about her financial stake in that business, which shares an address with Land and Lakes and lists her sister — a Land and Lakes executive — as its registered agent. Nor would she say what that company does.
Burke’s case initially was assigned to U.S. District Judge Robert Dow, who gave it up when Chief Justice John Roberts brought him to the U.S. Supreme Court to be his counselor. It was then reassigned to Kendall in October 2022.
Judge cited Burke’s age, support for lighter sentence
Last December, a jury convicted Burke of racketeering, bribery, and attempted extortion, finding that he pressured developers to hire his law firm when they were seeking city approval for projects.
At his sentencing in late June, Kendall ordered Burke to spend two years in prison and pay a $2 million fine.
Prosecutors had asked for a much tougher sentence. They wanted Kendall to give Burke, 80, a 10-year prison term.
Kendall said in court then that she was swayed by Burke’s age and by the hundreds of letters of support she received on his behalf from his wife and other family members, friends, clergy and civic leaders.
“I have never in all my career seen the letters that I have received for Mr. Burke,” the judge said.
Kendall also said she was troubled by the deal prosecutors made with former Ald. Danny Solis, who, despite the corruption-related crimes he’s charged with, is likely to avoid prison because he helped prosecutors build their cases against Burke and former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
In August, Kendall took the unusual step of further explaining her decision on Burke’s punishment. She did that as she gave 32 months in prison to developer Charles Cui, a central figure in one of the Burke schemes, eight months more than she gave Burke. Cui was convicted of bribery and lying to the FBI in a scheme involving a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side.
The judge pointed to “significant reasons” for having given Burke a lighter sentence, citing “just dozens and dozens of good works” that she said were “acts of kindness and generosity that he did outside of his position as an alderman.”
She also cited Burke’s age, saying “prison will be more difficult” for him and noting that Burke “did not obstruct justice,” as Cui did. “He did not lie to the FBI.”
How landfill came into city’s crosshairs
Kendall’s father, James J. Cowhey Sr. — whose older brother had served 12 years as a Chicago City Council member during the 1930s and 1940s — had been in the landfill business since the late 1940s, according to his testimony in the 1994 lawsuit.
Cowhey and his wife founded Land and Lakes in 1966 and operated landfills in the city and suburbs.
Starting under Mayor Harold Washington and continuing under Mayor Richard M. Daley, the City Council had passed a series of moratoriums to prohibit new landfills or the expansion of existing landfills. Burke voted for each one.
Cowhey had a city permit to operate a landfill on 52 acres at 122nd Street and Stony Island Avenue, but the city found he had expanded to an additional 27 acres without a permit. In March 1994, Daley’s environment commissioner Henry Henderson moved to shut down the landfill.
Cowhey had a $12 million waste disposal contract with Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation to bury the city’s garbage at the landfill, court records show.
Faced with that potential loss of revenue, Cowhey hired a team of politically connected lawyers and sued the city in Cook County Circuit Court, arguing that the moratorium was unconstitutional.
At that time, Kendall was a law clerk for a federal judge.
Cowhey’s legal team was led by the late William Quinlan, a former judge who was City Hall’s top lawyer under three mayors, and included Burke’s wife.
The Daley administration did not seek to disqualify Burke’s firm or his wife from being part of the legal team in the suit filed against the city.
In September 1994, Cook County Judge Albert Green ruled against City Hall, finding that the moratorium was unconstitutional and ordering the city to give Cowhey an operating permit and continue to send him its garbage under the terms of his contract.
City Hall appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court. While that appeal was pending, Anne Burke was appointed to a seat on the appellate court in August 1995 and no longer was involved in Cowhey’s lawsuit or her husband’s law firm. It’s unclear at that point whether Burke’s firm continued to work for Cowhey.
City Hall ended up winning the case when the appeals court reversed Green’s ruling on Dec. 31, 1996. Anne Burke did not take part in that ruling.
But the case dragged on until August 1998, when Cowhey agreed to shut down the Stony Island landfill and pay $500,000 to the city’s environmental fund.
Cowhey died four years later, in 2002, and Burke then sponsored a City Council resolution praising him.
Land and Lakes had been making campaign contributions to Burke before, during and after the landfill’s battle with City Hall.
In 2011, Land and Lakes, then run by Cowhey’s son James Cowhey Jr., filed another suit against City Hall, aiming to get around the Chicago moratorium by seeking to have the company’s 86-acre landfill at 138th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue deannexed from the city.
The Cowheys wanted the village of Dolton to annex the landfill so Land and Lakes could resume burying garbage there, with its dumping fees going to the suburb.
Cook County Judge Susan Fox Gillis approved the deannexation, but the Illinois General Assembly blocked that plan by passing a law, signed by Gov. Pat Quinn, to prevent the expansion of existing landfills or the creation of any new landfills in Cook County.
Dolton officials never annexed the Cowhey landfill, which is now in unincorporated Cook County.