Title: Johnson v. Halloran
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 89594
State: Illinois
Issuer: Illinois Supreme Court
Date: December 1, 2000

Docket No. 89594-Agenda 33-September 2000.
RICHARD R. JOHNSON, Appellee, v. MICHAEL J.
								 HALLORAN et al., Appellants.
Opinion filed December 1, 2000.
	CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON delivered the opinion of the
court:
	The issue in this case is whether sovereign immunity bars an
action against members of the Cook County public defenders
office for negligence they allegedly committed in the course of
representing Richard Johnson, an indigent criminal defendant,
pursuant to an appointment by the circuit court. The circuit court
answered this question in the affirmative and granted summary
judgment in favor of the public defenders and against Johnson,
their former client. The appellate court reversed and remanded for
further proceedings. 312 Ill. App. 3d 695. We granted leave to
appeal. 177 Ill. 2d R. 315. For the reasons that follow, we now
affirm the appellate court.
	The record shows that in August of 1991, Richard Johnson
was charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault in the circuit
court of Cook County. The public defender of Cook County was
appointed by the court to represent Johnson. The defense of the
case was then assigned to assistant public defender Michael
Halloran.
	Pretrial discovery obtained from the State included two
Chicago police department lab reports. According to those reports,
body fluids on the vaginal swab and panties of the victim collected
after the crime revealed the presence of H activity, indicating that
the fluids were from a person who was a secretor. The blood and
saliva samples taken from the victim and from Johnson showed
that they were both nonsecretors. Accordingly, Johnson could not
have been the sole donor of the foreign body fluids found on the
person or clothing of the victim.
	Halloran, Johnson's appointed counsel, did not seek to use
this information at Johnson's trial. Instead, he presented a motion
in limine to prohibit the State from introducing any evidence of
blood, semen, or saliva testing. The circuit court granted
Halloran's motion in limine on September 4, 1992, and the test
results were never placed in evidence.
	Following a bench trial, Johnson was convicted in the
underlying criminal case and was sentenced to 30 years in the
Illinois Department of Corrections. Prior to this conviction, no
DNA profile was performed on Johnson, the victim, or the
victim's husband.
	Johnson subsequently sought relief under the Post-Conviction
Hearing Act (725 ILCS 5/122-1 et seq. (West 1994)). In the
course of the post-conviction proceedings, DNA tests were
performed which exonerated Johnson. Based on those results,
Johnson's conviction was vacated on March 8, 1996.
	Following his exoneration and release, Johnson brought this
legal malpractice action in the circuit court of Cook County.
Named as defendants were Halloran, Johnson's trial attorney;
Moses Collins, Halloran's supervisor; Shelton Green, supervisor
of the public defender's felony trial division; and Rita Fry, the
Cook County public defender. Johnson also included a count
against Cook County based on respondeat superior.
	Defendants moved to dismiss plaintiff's complaint based on
the statute of limitations. That motion was denied. Defendants
then filed a motion for summary judgment on the basis of
sovereign immunity, arguing that public defenders are employees
of the state and that the circuit court therefore lacked subject
matter jurisdiction to hear this case because plaintiff's claims must
be brought in the Illinois Court of Claims. The circuit court
granted defendants' motion on May 27, 1998.
	Plaintiff appealed, arguing that the circuit court erred in
granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants on the basis
of sovereign immunity. Defendants cross-appealed, contending
that the circuit court erred in finding that plaintiff's complaint was
timely filed. The appellate court agreed with the circuit court that
plaintiff's complaint was not time-barred. Contrary to the circuit
court, however, it held that the claim was not barred by sovereign
immunity either. Accordingly, it reversed the entry of summary
judgment against plaintiff and remanded for further proceedings.
	In reviewing the lower courts' judgments, we begin with an
analysis of the defendants' employment status. As previously
indicated, the circuit court regarded the individual defendants as
employees of the state. They are not. While public defenders and
their assistants may exercise sovereign powers in performing their
duties (Chief Judge of the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit v. Illinois
State Labor Relations Board, 178 Ill. 2d 333, 344 (1997)), the
exercise of sovereign power does not, by definition, convert them
into state employees. In Illinois, sovereign power is not restricted
to the state government. It may also be exercised by home rule
units. See Ill. Const. 1970, art. VII, §6(i). Home rule units possess
the same powers as the state government, except where such
powers are limited by the General Assembly. City of Chicago v.
Roman, 184 Ill. 2d 504, 513 (1998). Counties which have a chief
executive officer elected by the electors of the county, which Cook
County does, are home rule units. Ill. Const. 1970, art. VII, §6(a).
	By statute, the office of public defender is created in the
Counties Code (see 55 ILCS 5/3-4000 et seq. (West 1996)), and
the public defender systems in Illinois are organized and operated
at the county level (55 ILCS 5/1-1001 (West 1996)). In counties
with a population over 1 million, which Cook County has, the
public defender is appointed by the president of the county board
of commissioners with the board's advice and consent. 55 ILCS
5/3-4004.1 (West 1996). The board sets the rate of compensation
for the public defender and the public defender's assistants, clerks
and employees, and that compensation is paid out of the county
treasury. 55 ILCS 5/3-4004.2(d), 3-4008.1 (West 1996). The
board is also responsible for providing suitable office quarters for
the public defender and for paying, from the county treasury,
necessary office, travel and other expenses incurred by the public
defender in the defense of cases. 55 ILCS 5/3-4009 (West 1996).
	The power to remove the public defender is vested in the
president of the county board where, as here, the population of the
county exceeds 1 million. 55 ILCS 5/3-4004.2(c) (West 1996). In
addition, section 5-1003 of the Counties Code (55 ILCS 5/5-1003
(West 1996)) provides that the county is required to indemnify the
public defender or assistant public defenders for any judgment
rendered against them for any injury to person or property they
cause while engaged in the performance of their duties, except
where the injury results from willful misconduct.
	Based upon the foregoing provisions, the office of public
defender must be regarded as a county office rather than as an
agency of the state. Our court has expressly so held. Doherty v.
Caisley, 104 Ill. 2d 72, 79 (1984). Public defenders and their
assistants are therefore county employees, not employees of the
State of Illinois.
	Having established defendants' employment status, we must
next consider whether and to what extent they are shielded by
sovereign immunity. The doctrine of sovereign immunity was
abolished by this court in Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit
District No. 302, 18 Ill. 2d 11 (1959). The legislature responded
by enacting the Local Governmental and Governmental
Employees Tort Immunity Act (745 ILCS 10/1-101 (West 1996))
in 1965. That Act adopted the general principle from Molitor that
local governmental units are liable in tort, but limited this liability
with a list of immunities based on specific governmental
functions. Barnett v. Zion Park District, 171 Ill. 2d 378, 386
(1996).
	Five years after the Local Governmental and Governmental
Employees Tort Immunity Act was passed, the Illinois
Constitution of 1970 was ratified. Article XIII, section 4, of the
Illinois Constitution provides: "Except as the General Assembly
may provide by law, sovereign immunity in this State is
abolished." Ill. Const. 1970, art. XIII, §4. This provision
"embodies the presumptive rule from Molitor that units of local
government are subject to tort liability," and makes the General
Assembly the ultimate authority for determining whether such a
governmental unit should nevertheless be immune from liability.
Immunity must now be predicated upon a specific statutory
enactment, and governmental units are liable in tort on the same
basis as private tortfeasors unless a valid statute dealing with tort
immunity imposes conditions on that liability. Harinek v. 161
North Clark Street Ltd. Partnership, 181 Ill. 2d 335, 344-45
(1998).
	Defendants have not cited and we have not found any specific
statutory enactment which would cloak them with immunity for
the legal malpractice alleged by plaintiff in this case. To the
contrary, section 5-1003 of the Counties Code (55 ILCS 5/5-1003
(West 1996)), cited above, presupposes that public defenders and
their assistants are subject to liability in tort for injuries they cause
while engaged in the performance of their duties. If they were not,
if sovereign immunity shielded public defenders and their
assistants from such liability, there would be no need to require
counties to indemnify them, as section 5-1003 does, for judgments
recovered against them for the injuries they cause. The law would
serve no purpose.
	Because there was no specific statutory immunity for
defendants at the time of the events giving rise to plaintiff's cause
of action, the circuit court erred in granting summary judgment for
defendants based on sovereign immunity, and its judgment was
properly reversed by the appellate court. This conclusion is not
altered by the General Assembly's subsequent enactment of the
Public and Appellate Defender Immunity Act (Pub. Act 91-877,
eff. June 30, 2000 (codified at 745 ILCS 19/1)), which took effect
after the appellate court filed its opinion in the case.
	The Public and Appellate Defender Immunity Act provides
that public defenders and their assistants and the persons or
entities employing them are not liable "for any damages in tort,
contract, or otherwise, in which the plaintiff seeks damages by
reason of legal or professional malpractice, except for willful and
wanton misconduct." Putting aside the question of whether this
legislation might constitute an impermissible attempt by the
General Assembly to overrule the appellate court's judgment in a
pending case, we note that application of the new law here would
have the effect of stripping plaintiff of his negligence claims. That
cannot be permitted. Plaintiff's claims vested prior to enactment
of the new law and constitute a constitutionally protected property
interest. As such, they cannot be abrogated by subsequent
legislative action without offending plaintiff's due process rights.
See Link v. Venture Stores, Inc., 286 Ill. App. 3d 977, 979 (1997).
	For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the appellate court
is affirmed.
Affirmed.
	JUSTICE BILANDIC, specially concurring:
	I agree with the majority that sovereign immunity does not bar
an action against members of the Cook County public defenders
office for negligence they allegedly committed in the course of
representing Richard Johnson. I also agree that the subsequently
enacted Public and Appellate Defender Immunity Act (Act) (Pub.
Act 91-877, eff. June 30, 2000 (codified at 745 ILCS 19/1)) does
not apply in this case. I do so, however, for reasons other than
those stated in the majority opinion.
	I, along with other members of this court, have advocated the
adoption by this court of the test set forth by the United States
Supreme Court in Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244,
128 L. Ed. 2d 229, 114 S. Ct. 1483 (1994), for determining when
a new or amended statute will be applied on appeal to pending
cases. See People v. Ramsey, 192 Ill. 2d 154, 159-74, 174-88
(2000) (Bilandic, J., specially concurring; Freeman, J., also
specially concurring, joined by McMorrow, J.). As I noted in
Ramsey, the Landgraf test, which was devised for determining
when a new federal statute will be applied on appeal to pending
cases, is set forth as follows:
			" 'When a case implicates a federal statue [or a state
statute] enacted after the events in  suit, the court's first
task is to determine whether Congress [or the  General
Assembly] has expressly prescribed the statute's proper
reach. If Congress [or the General Assembly] has done so,
of course, there is no need to resort to judicial default
rules. When, however, the statute contains no such
express command, the court must determine whether the
new statute would have retroactive effect, i.e., whether it
would impair rights a party possessed when he acted,
increase a party's liability for past conduct, or impose new
duties with respect to transactions already completed. If
the statute would operate retroactively, our traditional
presumption teaches that it does not govern ***.' " See
Ramsey, 192 Ill. 2d  at 171-72 (Bilandic, J., specially
concurring), quoting Landgraf, 511 U.S.  at 280, 128 L. Ed. 2d  at 261-62, 114 S. Ct.  at 1505.
	I reiterate that this court should apply the above test in this
case and in future cases concerning the application of a new or
amended statute to a case pending on appeal. Applying the
Landgraf test to the present case begins with the language of the
Act itself. First, we must determine whether the General Assembly
has expressly prescribed the proper reach of the Act, i.e., whether
the act applies to pending cases. See Landgraf, 511 U.S.  at 280,
128 L. Ed. 2d  at 261-62, 114 S. Ct.  at 1505. The Act contains the
following sentence: "This Act takes effect upon becoming law,"
i.e., on June 30, 2000. See Pub. Act 91-877, §99, eff. June 30,
2000. Such language does not indicate clearly the temporal reach
of this Act. The question therefore becomes whether the Act
would have retroactive effect, namely, whether it would impair the
rights a party possessed when he acted. See Landgraf, 511 U.S.  at
280, 128 L. Ed. 2d  at 262, 114 S. Ct.  at 1505. Application of the
Act to this case would have retroactive effect because it would
deprive plaintiff of his legal malpractice cause of action, based on
negligence, which he possessed when he filed suit against
defendants. Therefore, pursuant to the Landgraf test, our
traditional presumption against statutory retroactivity teaches that
this Act does not govern in this case, which was pending on appeal
when the Act became law.
	Based on the above analysis, I agree that the Public and
Appellate Defender Immunity Act does not apply to this case.
	JUSTICES FREEMAN and McMORROW join in this special
concurrence.