Court-Annexed Mandatory Arbitration Annual Report
Fiscal Year 2004

Introduction

The Fiscal Year 2004 Annual Evaluation Report of the court-annexed mandatory arbitration program is presented in compliance with Section 2-1008A of the Mandatory Arbitration System Act, 735 ILCS 5/2-1001A et seq.

The Supreme Court of Illinois and the Illinois General Assembly created court-annexed mandatory arbitration to reduce the backlog of civil cases and to provide litigants with a forum, other than the trial courts, in which their complaints could be more expeditiously resolved by an impartial fact finder.

The institution of mandatory arbitration was the result of substantial deliberation and planning. Efforts by the Supreme Court in devising a high quality arbitration system spanned nearly a decade. When developing the Illinois program, the Supreme Court and its committees secured the input of public officials representing all branches of Illinois government, as well as the general public. As a result, the program now in place is truly a coalescence of the best dispute resolution concepts.

Beginning in September 1982, then Chief Justice Howard C. Ryan urged the judiciary to explore suitable court-sponsored alternative dispute resolution techniques. In September 1985, the Illinois General Assembly passed and the Governor signed House Bill 1265(1), authorizing the Supreme Court to institute a system of mandatory arbitration. Before the end of May 1987, the Supreme Court adopted arbitration-specific rules recommended by a committee of prominent judges and attorneys. Later that year, the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Winnebago County, began operating a pilot court-annexed mandatory arbitration program.

Expanding on the success of the Winnebago County program, the Supreme Court authorized the following counties to implement court-annexed mandatory arbitration programs:

• Cook, DuPage and Lake Counties (December 1988)
• McHenry County (November 1990)
• St. Clair County (May 1993)
• Boone and Kane Counties (November 1994)
• Will County (March 1995)
• Ford and McLean Counties (March 1996)
• Henry, Mercer, Rock Island and Whiteside Counties (October 2000)

With the approval of the Supreme Court, and depending upon the availability of funding, future expansion of court-annexed mandatory arbitration programs in Illinois is anticipated.

This Fiscal Year 2004 Annual Report summarizes the activity of court-annexed mandatory arbitration from July 1, 2003 through June 30, 2004. The report includes an overview of mandatory arbitration in Illinois and contains a description of statistical data as maintained by each arbitration program site. Statewide statistics are provided as an aggregate and/or average of the data furnished by Illinois' fifteen court-annexed mandatory arbitration programs. The final section of the report is devoted to providing a narrative profile of each of the fifteen court-annexed mandatory arbitration programs. The local program reports include statistics that are unique for that jurisdiction.