Nowakowski, Michael Oral History 06052018
DANE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL NOWAKOWSKI
JUNE 5, 2018
This is Dan Gartzke and today is Monday, June 5, 2018, and I’m at the offices of Boardman & Clark in Madison, Wisconsin to interview Michael Nowakowski as part of the Dane County Bar Association Oral History Project. This interview will be recorded and transcribed and made available for people interested in evolution and development of the practice of law in Dane County.
GARTZKE: Mike, do I have your permission to record you and have a transcript prepared?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Okay, so why don’t you give us a general introduction of who you are and where you live and all that?
NOWAKOWSKI: I live for seven months of the year in Madison, Wisconsin. I live for five months of the year in Arizona. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At age 18 I came to Madison to go to school, attended the University of Wisconsin, married a girl from Madison after my sophomore year. We had a child. I attended the University of Wisconsin Law School, graduated in 1974 and went into private practice immediately following my graduation from the UW Law School.
GARTZKE: And with that you went into private practice in Madison?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: Were you with a firm?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: What did you open up under your name?
NOWAKOWSKI: My name.
GARTZKE: Laughing. Where were you located?
NOWAKOWSKI: Initially I was located in my house. I had a sort of interesting employment history while I was in law school. I did not work as a clerk. Instead, I was a TA for a professor at the law school and ended up teaching the class in the school of social work called Law for Social Workers and as a result of that was that I had no inside track in the opportunities for employment upon graduation. I had the disability when I graduated that as I was approaching my graduation in 1974, I also was running for county supervisor in my district, and while I interviewed for a number of jobs, I suspect that employers were hesitant to hire somebody who was going to have the responsibilities of, if elected, the responsibilities of county supervisor and the time responsibilities.
GARTZKE: Which professor were you working for?
NOWAKOWSKI: Joel Handler.
GARTZKE: Do you remember where you interviewed, what firms, or were they insurance companies or the state or?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, primarily they were firms and I had good grades and I was Order of the Coif I think is what they called it.
GARTZKE: Oh yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: And so that sort of got my foot in the door of a few places to be interviewed, I can’t remember.
ARTZKE: Can’t remember the names?
NOWAKOWSKI: I’m embarrassed to not be able to.
GARTZKE: Don’t worry like I said we can fill them in later, not a problem.
NOWAKOWSKI: In any event he set me up with an interview with um…I should
have warned you before I began this that I am terrible with names.
GARTZKE: Okay, so the professor set you up with some interviews?
NOWAKOWSKI: He set me up with an interview because some good friends of his, one of whom was also a law professor, Margo Melli, and her husband was a lawyer.
GARTZKE: Melli?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes, and so I had an interview with Joe Melli and it was a delightful hour that I spent with Joe Melli. And finally we had gotten around to talking about the job itself that he was going to be hiring somebody for and he shared with me what their firm did, which I had no idea what they did before I had walked in there. And he said, (“W we primarily do labor law representing management, and I said well I think I might have some difficulty with that as my father was a teamster and my mother was the steward for her union at the post office.
GARTZKE: (Laughing) Yeah!
NOWAKOWSKI: And he said, “Well you think about that and would you feel comfortable representing management because we never represent the union.”
GARTZKE: (Laugh)
NOWAKOWSKI: And I said, “I really would not feel comfortable doing that.” And Joe Melli and I became good friends, well social friends but good acquaintances and ultimately when I ran for judge he endorsed me and contributed to my campaign and was a good supporter and were on cordial terms for quite a while.
GARTZKE: That must have been a very healthy endorsement to have.
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, indeed it was. My opponent made a little bit of hay about that contending that I was a conservative and of course I had a number of other endorsements that probably demonstrated to the contrary.
GARTZKE; That was about 1984 you ran for judge the first time?
NOWAKOWSKI: ‘85.
GARTZKE: And that was Jack Sweeney that ran against you?
NOWAKOWSKI: Indeed.
GARTZKE: Any you know he ultimately practiced with Melli for at least a little while.
NOWAKOWSKI: He did?
GARTZKE: Yeah, huh, I little ironic there.
NOWAKOWSKI: And Jack Sweeney is just a sweetheart of a fellow.
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: I mean I didn’t know him before the election but we got to know each other very well of course during the election.
GARTZKE: And, were there other people running initially? You had a primary?
NOWAKOWSKI: We did not.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: Which was a little bit strange. There were two newly created seats and I announced that I was going to run for Branch 13 and then there was Branch 14. And George Northup who was a court commissioner was also going to run and so he had called and asked to have lunch one time and wanted to know which of two seats I was going to run for. Then he chose to run for the other one.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And strangely enough his seat attracted, I think there may have been five people running for that seat so there was a primary for that and Jack Sweeney and I were the only two who ran for Branch 13.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. Let’s go back a little ways. Let’s go to the background of your parents. You said your father was a teamster and your mother had been a shop steward for the post office. Where did you grow up?
NOWAKOWSKI: In Milwaukee.
GARTZKE: In any particular neighborhood in Milwaukee or….
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, I was born when my parents lived on the south side and before I was school age we moved to the north side and that’s where we lived the balance of the time that I lived in Milwaukee. At that time my mom was a stay-at-home mom and she would work at the post office at Christmas time to make a few dollars because they always needed some help at the post office at that time. My dad did not work as a teamster. He drove truck but it was not at a union job until I was probably in high school and it was not until after I graduated from high school. We had five kids in the family and my mom didn’t go to work full time until after the youngest one got into probably junior high school when she stated working full time and then that was when she became an active union member with the post office.
GARTZKE: Were you born in about 1949?
NOWAKOWSKI: ‘48.
GARTZKE: ‘48? Okay. Had you had any lawyers in the family that attracted you to law?
NOWAKOWSKI: None.
GARTZKE: Is there a Nowakowski who is a lawyer in Milwaukee, maybe in worker’s comp area?
NOWAKOWSKI: If there is I’m not sure.
GARTZKE: Okay, and do you have any family members since then? Oh you said none. So what caught your eye about going to law school and being a lawyer?
NOWAKOWSKI: As an undergraduate I was going to be a doctor and I became disillusioned with the idea of organic chemistry. And then I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and ultimately after perhaps my junior year I decided against that as well. I won’t bore you with all of the reasoning for that, but I suddenly decided to become a high school teacher, a high school social studies teacher. And having not been in the school of education I had to scramble to get education credits in order to be accredited and certified so again I won’t bore you with how I did that, but my last semester I went to the school of education to sign up and we knew that I needed to practice teaching and I walked in and asked to sign up for a practice teaching opportunity, and I will never forget the moment I did that the woman there said, and I was wanting to do that in the spring, this was the fall semester, and she looked quizzically at me and then asked what field are you in and I said social studies and she broke out laughing. She said there is at least a year and a half waiting list.
GARTZKE: Oh, hahaha..
NOWAKOWSKI: So unbeknownst to me oh ????. That’s how the end result was that I had a year to wait and I walked down Bascom Hill and I ran into a friend at Rennebohms at State and Lake and he was filling out the application to take the LSAT and suggested why don’t you take the LSAT and that would be a good thing on your resume for being a social studies teacher, and I did and I did well on it and I had good grades and got into several law schools and went to law school for a year and I loved law school.
GARTZKE: And that was what would have been about 1969 then you started or ‘68?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I was taking….
GARTZKE: Sorry, you graduated in ‘74.
NOWAKOWSKI: It took five years for me to get my undergraduate degree.
GARTZKE: Oh, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: Because I needed to work while I was going to school and so I think I started in ‘70 or ‘71.
GARTZKE: Yeah, I was calculating it wrong. It looks like ‘71, cause if you graduated in ‘74. So, okay. So you went pretty much straight through college and then to law school.
NOWAKOWSKI: I ended up I had one semester that I was not in school and I had a job, I was a cab driver and I also worked for my wife’s dad as a carpet layer. So, in the morning I would lay carpet and then at 3:30 I would leave his job wherever he was working and then go and get the cab and drive cab until 2:30-3:00 in the morning.
GARTZKE: Any other jobs you had before law school – carpet layer, cab driver?
NOWAKOWSKI: Indeed. I had a job as a golf caddy all through high school, and that is what gave me a scholarship to go to the University of Wisconsin.
GARTZKE: Is that an Evans Scholarship?
NOWAKOWSKI: Evans Scholarship.
GARTZKE: I remember having heard of those. I think they still exist.
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh indeed.
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: It’s a huge operation.
GARTZKE: Yeah. It’s been a great benefit to a lot of people.
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh yes.
GARTZKE: Any other interesting jobs that you care to mention?
NOWAKOWSKI: I was usher at the Milwaukee Arena Auditorium when Al McGuire was first hired as a coach at Marquette University. I got to see all of the Marquette games.
GARTZKE: Do you remember what law school tuition was when you were at law school?
NOWAKOWSKI: I believe it was $600.
GARTZKE: A semester? A year?
NOWAKOWSKI: It might have been per year.
GARTZKE: Okay. Alright I’m sure it’s a lot more now. Huh!
NOWAKOWSKI: Well I know that (paper shuffling) is student loans. When we graduated we owed $6,600 in student loans.
GARTZKE: Was that just you?
NOWAKOWSKI: Between myself and my wife.
GARTZKE: And you mentioned your wife was getting an education degree at the same time, right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Alright, okay. And let’s see, you said you enjoyed your first year of law school.
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: Why?
NOWAKOWSKI: I actually enjoyed all my years of law school
GARTZKE: Oh okay, alright. So the kind of picture I got is you did law school as kind of thing to tide you over until you could get into student teaching almost, but you liked enough to stick with it.
NOWAKOWSKI: I did and I liked it so well that I said I’m going to stay doing this.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: It was challenging, it was just very, very interesting.
GARTZKE: Any particularly memorable classmates or experiences you want to tell us about?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, I do recall my first year of law school I took civil procedure from Ted Finman and that was a particularly good course for me. And my second year I took constitutional law from Abner Brodie.
GARTZKE: How do you spell Brodie? I didn’t know that one.
NOWAKOWSKI: B-r-o-d-i-e.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And evidence from Frank Tuerkheimer.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And I took environmental law from Don Large.
GARTZKE: L-a-r-g-e?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Okay. How about classmates that you remember that you’ve stayed in touch with over the years?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, Bob Ramsdell was a fellow who I met in law school and ultimately when I got out of law school and eventually needed to have an office, he was in a suite of offices that had one open and that was when I got started with him and he and I shared office space all the way up until I ran for judge.
GARTZKE: Okay. Do you remember any of your first clients and what they were and what your hourly rate was for instance or anything about those early days?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, I had a client that provided a great deal of work for me who was a plumbing and electrical contractor and who had I think had been sort of expelled as a client along with his brother by their lawyer for not paying their bills, and they were in deep financial troubles.
GARTZKE: Plumbing contractor you’re saying, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And electrical. And they were, one of the brothers had a son who was a youth hockey player and my son played youth hockey and that was how I knew him. And so, you know, that’s one of the 6 o’clock in the morning practices. We got to talking and he shared with me the need he had for some legal assistance and one thing led to another and pretty soon I’m representing him, so that was one of my very first clients. And if I recall correctly, I think I was charging $40/hour.
GARTZKE: And that would have been general small business collections or leases or contract reviews maybe, any number of things like that?
NOWAKOWSKI: And ultimately, I did their bankruptcy.
GARTZKE: Oh (laughing). Did you do much bankruptcy work over the years?
NOWAKOWSKI: Eventually I did and I got to know Leonard Bessman.
GARTZKE: How do you spell Bessman?
NOWAKOWSKI: B-E-S-S-M-A-N. He was the bankruptcy judge in the federal courthouse which is where the Madison Municipal Building is now.
GARTZKE: On Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Which at that point was Monona? Right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Right.
GARTZKE: Yeah, okay, so you did end up doing a lot of bankruptcy?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did quite a bit.
GARTZKE: Okay. Other?
NOWAKOWSKI: Mainly individual bankruptcies. I didn’t do – I practiced law for 11 years, from ’74’ to ‘85’ when I ran for judge, and I wasn’t, I never took bankruptcy or creditor’s rights or any courses in law school that prepared me for that. It just happened that my best clients were the fellows who were the electrical and plumbing contractors and they had financial difficulties, which eventually led to…. I don’t think there was any alternative to bankruptcy. They couldn’t possibly pay all the bills they owed.
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: So, that was sort of the conclusion that I reached and having reached that conclusion bankruptcy seemed to be the only alternative.
GARTZKE: And then you did other bankruptcies after that and you gained experience?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Any other areas you practiced in? I know you mentioned divorce/family law.
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, for quite a while as you can imagine as a sole practitioner practicing on my own I was taking most any kind of case that came along and within four or five years I was able to restrict my practice to certain areas simply because I had enough people coming and especially because I did not feel comfortable doing criminal law, I didn’t do enough criminal to feel like I was expert in it and what was at stake in representing folks who were facing the prospect of going to jail was simply too extreme and I did not want to give them the feeling that I was competent enough to handle their case. So, while I did some criminal law in those first couple of years, I never felt entirely comfortable doing it.
GARTZKE: Did you have any relationships with criminal law attorneys to whom you’d refer cases that came in and who in particular?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, Bob Ramsdell for one.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. What other areas of law did you do? Did you end up doing other creditor/debtor things since you started the bankruptcy?
NOWAKOWSKI: Nothing unique, I mean not especially. I did a fair amount of divorce, but I evolved into doing quite a bit of guardian ad litem work.
GARTZKE: Oh, okay. Specifically in the divorce arena or in the guardianship or other arenas?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, at that time in ’74 until the early 80’s Erv Brunner was the juvenile judge or was the juvenile judge and then he was a juvenile judge after court reorganization and he began appointing me as a guardian ad litem in quite a number of cases so that in 1985 when I was elected as a judge I think I had 13 cases that were active that I was the guardian ad litem in, and so juvenile court was a big part of what I was doing, and of course divorce cases as well.
GARTZKE: Were those private pay or county pay cases?
NOWAKOWSKI: Almost all, I mean juvenile cases were all county paid.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. You touched on the court reorganization. That was 1978, so you practiced before we went to I think it was called the unified courts, right, with all circuit courts.
NOWAKOWSKI: Correct.
GARTZKE: And previously and I just know this with bits and pieces it was county court which had certain jurisdiction and circuit court which had certain jurisdiction. So, was your practice in more county court or circuit court or?
NOWAKOWSKI: Both. Well, I would say mostly it was in county court because of the divorces were always in county court.
GARTZKE: Oh they were? Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: I don’t think ever those were in circuit court. I did some personal injury work and so jury trials in personal injury cases were – I don’t know that were always before circuit judges but the jury trials that I remember having were before circuit judges.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: But we had Judge Byrne, Judge Torphy, Judge Eich started out as a county judge.
GARTZKE: Was Sachtjen judge then?
NOWAKOWSKI: Sachtjen was a circuit judge, Bardwell was a circuit judge.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: I don’t think Jackman was still a judge when I was actually practicing. I appeared before Jackman when I was a defendant.
GARTZKE: Personally as a defendant?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Is that something you want to talk about? Having been a consumer of the legal system in relation to a practitioner?
NOWAKOWSKI: I came to the university in 1966 as an undergraduate and in the fall of 1967, I was beat up quite badly by the police at the Dow demonstration and was involved thereafter pretty actively in the anti-war movement on the campus. After I was married, I continued to be involved in anti-war activities and during the Cambodian incursion was arrested on the campus and was hauled off to jail and we had no amount of money. I would say this was not the kind of thing that I was going to be able to go to my parents or my wife’s parents and ask them to provide bail money for me. And at that time there was no court commissioner so the county judges rotated as the intake judicial officer and I had the misfortune of appearing in front of Russell Mittelstadt who set my bail at the highest possible – I was charged with disorderly conduct and set my bail at $500 cash despite the fact that I was married, had a child, was employed and so I had an attorney from the Legal Aid Society who appealed it and we went before Judge Jackman, so that’s how I ….
GARTZKE: So what did he do with the bail, did he reduce it?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: Oh (laughing). So you sat in jail for a while?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did for 3 days.
GARTZKE: And that would have been in the, what’s now the City-County Building, right? Upstairs there?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah, that was the only jail there was at that time.
GARTZKE: Yeah, yeah, okay. So, obviously, you weren’t ultimately convicted of a crime because that would have precluded you from being a lawyer I’m sure.
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, I don’t know if it would have precluded me but I was not convicted.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And ironically Mike Torphy was the judge to whom the case was assigned and Mike Torphy dismissed the case without a trial on the grounds that what I was accused of doing according to the criminal complaint was not criminal behavior.
GARTZKE: Okay. By his own, there wasn’t a motion or anything like that or just?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well no, my attorney made a motion.
GARTZKE: Who was your lawyer?
NOWAKOWSKI: Ed Krueger.
GARTZKE: Oh (laughing) and who was the prosecutor on the case?
NOWAKOWSKI: I don’t recall that.
GARTKE: Okay, alright.
NOWAKOWSKI: It was sort of a small matter.
GARTZKE: It is, it is. Okay. Alright, so we were talking about some of the areas you practiced - bankruptcy, some family law/divorces, you mentioned having personal injury, you took cases to trial?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did
GARTZKE: All the way to verdict?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Good, how many jury trials did you try as a lawyer, and not as a judge?
NOWAKOWSKI: You know I got asked that question during the campaign and I had a ready answer and now I don’t remember.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: I think it was seven or eight but I can’t remember.
GARTZKE: Okay. You know again we’ll do the transcript. We’ll clean up like some of the side discussions here that people aren’t interested in, so that’s fine. Any other areas of private practice that you recall?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes, I did people’s taxes. I did small business stuff. I did estate planning stuff of various sorts, wills.
GARTZKE: Did you probate estates as well?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: Real estate?
NOWAKOWSKI: Lots of real estate. I did something that somebody who was a lawyer, a new lawyer today, would not even know what it means.
GARTZKE: Such as? Did you do title opinions, read abstracts?
NOWAKOWSKI: I read abstracts and did title opinions.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And that was of course how I became quite adept at using a Dictaphone.
GARTZKE: Yeah, we talked about that, the technology of the practice. And so you when you were practicing you had an assistant who would transcribe things.
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: And you had a recording device, cassette recorder?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Both sides cassettes?
NOWAKOWSKI: I think that’s how they started out.
GARTZKE: Yeah, it didn’t matter…..
NOWAKOWSKI: They were both sides of cassettes.
GARTZKE: Yeah. And describe doing a title opinion. Yeah, because you’re right, people reading this probably will have no idea what that was. Describe that process.
NOWAKOWSKI: When we read an abstract and I just felt that essentially, I was the title company and I would start at the very beginning and
GARTZKE: In the very beginning would have been the land grant from the US government to somebody in about the 1840’s right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Sure. And I would then hope that there had been no conveyances for about a 100 years.
GARTZKE: (Laughing)
NOWAKOWSKI: But you would look at the actual conveyances that would all be reflected in this abstract that would have been prepared by the title company showing every transaction that affected that piece of real estate that was now the subject of an offer to purchase and a prospective closing that was going to happen, and a mortgage presumably have no, seldom there were very few cash sales, and you would review them and you would also hope that the land would have been put into a certified survey or a subdivision so that it had a lot number instead of a metes and bounds description and, but you would follow that from the original grant back in the 1800’s to the present day and you would then dictate a letter which would be your title opinion in which you would say that you believe that so and so owns title to this property subject to and then you would list as in title insurance commitments and then you would have all the CYA parts in there.
GARTZKE: Yeah, unrecorded liens and things like that that you had no control over.
NOWAKOWSKI: Sure.
GARTZKE: Yeah, yeah, huh! Okay. Did you ever come across some of those inappropriate, unenforceable covenants saying this land shall not be conveyed to minorities, certain protected, did you?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes, yes.
GARTZKE: Would you accept those in some way and draw attention to them?
NOWAKOWSKI: I would.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And I would point out that they were present and that there were restrictions, but that under, I don’t know, cited couple of the US Supreme Court cases that it was unlikely that these were enforceable.
GARTZKE: But you had to note them as potential clouds on the title right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh sure.
GARTZKE: Yeah, okay good. Did you have a mentor, somebody you would turn to when you were in private practice that you could call up a senior lawyer or something and say can you help me out, can I bounce some ideas off of you?
NOWAKOWSKI: I didn’t.
GARTZKE: I remember hearing about a group called the committee on confusion where people would go and post ideas, a kind of a list serve, but at lunch. You didn’t attend that?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: Alright. Were you a member of the Dane County Bar Association originally?
NOWAKOWSKI: I was. I joined at the first opportunity I had and I continue to be a member.
GARTZKE: Any other bar associations that you were regularly a part of, obviously the State Bar, but?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, for a while I thought that there would be an advantage to be a member of the ABA and found that to be a waste of my money and it never really provided any particular benefit to me and I quit probably in the mid ‘90’s.
GARTZKE: You mentioned that when you were graduating you were also running for the county board. Did you get on the county board?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: And how long did you serve on the county board?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, in 1974 I ran against an incumbent and only people who are true election buffs would ever remember this, but in the period of January-February thereabouts leading up to the election there was a trial going on in Milwaukee of the county board chairman whose name was Richard Nowakowski.
GARTZKE: Oh!
NOWAKOWSKI: And so the almost natural inclination of folks – this is my speculation, was to believe that I being from Milwaukee and I’m running for a county supervisor position I must be related to this fellow, and he’s being charged with all sorts of terrible corruption charges, and virtually every night in the Cap Times on the front page there would be a story about the trial and stories of terrible things happening on boats on Lake Michigan and pot parties and what have you, and eventually I ended up losing I think by 43 votes. So, in 1976 I ran again against the same fellow. There was no trial in Milwaukee and I won quite handily. I served and in 1978 I ran unopposed and in 1980 I would have been up for re-election again but we had put our name in to adopt a child and about the time when I would have had to have sort of declared that I was running again, we got word that our name had reached sort of the top of the list and so I said there was no way that – I mean now I know how time consuming this job is, there is no way I could be an adoptive father and it is very good thing I did that because it ended up that we adopted two birth siblings at the same time.
GARTZKE: So then your next campaign was 1985 you said, right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Correct.
GARTZKE: And that was running for Dane County Circuit Court Branch 13, a position you held until you retired in when?
NOWAKOWSKI: 2009.
GARTZKE: 2009. And your first election was contested with Jack Sweeney. Did you have any other contested elections?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: So you always got to run unopposed then?
NOWAKOWSKI: I did.
GARTZKE: Alright! So let’s talk about your experiences as a Circuit Court judge.
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, one aside that I want to make is that you asked did I have a mentor as a practicing lawyer. When I started in 1985, and this was of course also true of George Northrup, when we started, we didn’t have a mentor as a judge, so the first time that you were given the responsibility to preside over a case, there was the people whose case it was were sitting in your courtroom and the case file was there and you were expected to do something about it.
GARTZKE: Well I thought, I mean now there is some mentoring that goes on strictly or directly, right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh indeed!
GARTZKE: But in ‘85 there was absolutely none of that.
NOWAKOWSKI: No mentor.
GARTZKE: So you were sworn in August 1st and that afternoon you could be sitting in the courtroom hearing your first case.
NOWAKOWSKI: That’s exactly what happened.
GARTZKE: So what was your first case?
NOWAKOWSKI: A full day of juvenile cases.
GARTZKE: Alright. So what do you remember about that first day?
NOWAKOWSKI: Something that a mentor would have told me.
GARTZKE: Oh, good!
NOWAKOWSKI: Because I had a young woman, the woman was 17. She was just about going to be 18. She was from Dane County and she had been charged in Milwaukee with prostitution and the judge in Milwaukee had sent her back to Dane County because they didn’t want to deal with it. And, so she comes to appear in court in Dane County and so what are we going to do with her here in Dane County? And, at that time 17-year-olds were still dealt with in juvenile court. I don’t really remember specifically what we did with her case. I think I said, “Go and do no harm”, but in any event everybody’s getting up and they’re leaving the courtroom and she looks at me and she says “Judge, why are you so red?”
GARTZKE: Why are you so red?
NOWAKOWSKI: And of course what was true is that I had my brand new robe that I had purchased as instructed and I had my suit coat on underneath my robe. Now if I had a mentor they would have told me you don’t wear your suit coat underneath your robe.
GARTZKE: (Laughing)
NOWAKOWSKI: And this is August and in the City-County Building the air-conditioning was inconsistent. So that that – she wasn’t the first case but she was on the first day and I will always remember her.
GARTZKE: That’s just an interest thing. Now, I remember you were at the end of the hall on the second floor when I would practice. Did you always stay in that office space or had you moved around.
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I stayed in the exact same place until we moved to the new courthouse.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. So you had to hit the ground running. At that point you probably didn’t have any kind of a formal law clerk or intern lawyer providing assistance. You had a clerk of courts of course who was sitting in the courtroom with you, right?
NOWAKOWSKI: We had a clerk, a clerk typist, and a court reporter, and I think as I remember, and this changed, it was just like political football that went on all the way in until I retired, but I had a law clerk who I think I had a third of a person when I started and I may not have had anybody when I started and I may have acquired a third of a person a couple years later.
GARTZKE: Okay. Did circuit judges have rotations in ‘85, criminal, juvenile?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes, several.
GARTZKE: Okay. And which rotation were you originally assigned?
NOWAKOWSKI: Juvenile.
GARTZKE: Okay. Well, yeah, obviously. How long did you stay with juvenile?
NOWAKOWSKI: Six years.
GARTZKE: And then you went to what?
NOWAKOWSKI: Civil.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And you were never, at least at that time, things have changed since then, but at that time I was supposed to spend about 60-70% of my time on juvenile cases, and the other 30-40% of my time on civil and family cases.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And the civil folks spent all of their time on civil or family. The criminal folks were supposed to spend 60 or 70% of their time on criminal and traffic and 30-40% on civil and family. So, that was our way of being generalists, which was the direction that the Supreme Court had given all the circuit judges around the state.
GARTZKE: Did you find some of the sitting judges to be helpful that you could go to and talk to and ask, and who in particular helped you.
NOWAKOWSKI: Chuck Jones.
GARTZKE: And he’d been judge for how long?
NOWAKOWSKI: Since about ‘72 or ‘73. He was originally the probate judge and he had run against a notorious – [ ].
GARTZKE: [ ]?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I think it was [ ].
GARTZKE: Okay, that name I don’t recognize. A notorious what? Scallywag? (Laugh)
NOWAKOWSKI: Just not a good judge.
GARTZKE: Okay. Oh, he had been a judge? He had been the probate judge and Chuck ran against and beat him.
GARTZKE: Okay. And that was then a county judge, not a circuit judge, because that was before the ‘78 reorganization.
NOWAKOWSKI: Right.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: I think ‘72ish or ‘73, and then Chuck ran to be a circuit judge and Chuck had also been very much involved in rewriting the probate code, the state probate code. That was when the state legislature still paid attention to people who knew something about a subject, that were interested in public policy, so what we have is a probate code is still attributable in large measure to Chuck Jones. But, Chuck became probably my best friend and I always felt comfortable and his office was just down the hall from me, and Bob Pekowsky was right next door to him.
GARTZKE: Sure, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: So, the three of us had lunch together probably 4 out of every 5 days a week.
GARTZKE: Okay, you had your informal support group then.
NOWAKOWSKI: Indeed.
GARTZKE: Did you find as you became a senior judge, was there somebody you in particular helped mentor?
NOWAKOWSKI: There were, but I prefer not to name them.
GARTZKE: Okay, no, fair enough. Then you became presiding judge for the district at some point, right? Or was that just chief judge in Dane County or?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, what happened is that Bob Pekowsky was the chief judge for our district.
GARTZKE: And the district is Dane, Green, Rock and La Fayette?
NOWAKOWSKI: Right.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And we were very well aware of the dangers and the shortage of space and the inadequacy of the existing space and other problems with the judicial system in general in Dane County, and so as strange as this may seem, the judges all got where they are by being elected. I mean many of them may have been appointed initially but they had to get elected to continue in the job, and yet they were not political people. So when I was elected, there was some thought that, “Oh good we have somebody who knows something about politics”, and that of course was a subject of question but in any event, Bob Pekowsky one noon hour said, “You know, I’m thinking about having a grand committee to look at all of the judicial system in Dane County and I would like you to be the chair of this committee.” And so it became known as the Dane County Judicial Long Range Planning Committee. Well, you could never say “no” to Bob Pekowsky, and I said, “Yes” of course, and little did I know that when it was long range it meant it would last forever.
GARTZKE: Yes.
NOWAKOWSKI: But, the county executive was on, the district attorney was on and the clerk of courts. I mean it was everybody that was connected to the court system.
GARTZKE: And when about was this?
NOWAKOWSKI: This was in about 1989.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And we had meetings over a period of several months and I would say in seven or eight months we issued a report. We weren’t going to just go on forever, but the recommendation part of the committee’s work we were going to get done rapidly, so we dealt with more than just space and issues, but we recommended a new courthouse. We recommended a municipal court for the City of Madison, because we were just swamped with all the parking tickets and all the citations that the police had issued, because there was no Madison Municipal Court at that time, and several other things, and that was about the time that the county executive decided that the courts were a good place to make political hay.
GARTZKE: Was that Raemisch?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, it was Rick Phelps.
GARTZKE: Phelps, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: He began opposing the efforts to move ahead on any of these. The city did move ahead on the municipal court, but in any event the courthouse part of it, the recommendation came out probably in 1990 and it was not until about 2000 and so you can see that this is taking a long time. In any event, in the meantime Bob Pekowsky’s time as chief judge has ended. Dan Moeser becomes chief judge and he pushes the issue. Rick Phelps leaves as county executive and Kathleen Falk becomes county executive. She also is against a new courthouse and Dan Moeser is working diligently to get that done as are a number of us and ultimately it gets approved. But his six years as chief judge also is up and then he got a seventh year. I don’t remember exactly how that happened because it was really a very sensitive time in the negotiations and so got it approved and then we had to go through a very difficult design process, but the approval happened and the design process is going to start and at that point it’s 2001 and that was the point that then all the judges signed a letter asking that I be appointed as the chief judge. So, the Supremes went along with that and I was the chief judge from 2001 to 2007 and the new courthouse opened in January of 2006.
GARTZKE: Did you still carry a full judicial load through all that or were you relieved?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I used to tell people that the rules gave me 25% cut in my case load.
GARTZKE: Yes.
NOWAKOWSKI: And the reality was that I had a 75% increase in my work load.
GARTZKE: (Laughing)
NOWAKOWSKI: No, that was a very exciting and challenging time. I don’t regret any of it.
GARTZKE: Are you satisfied and happy with what I still consider the new courthouse; it’s only been up 11 years.
NOWAKOWSKI: There’s a few things about it that maybe we would have, now in hindsight, we might have tried to do a little differently, but for the most part absolutely it’s such an improvement over the City-County Building.
GARTZKE: I imagine you spent a lot of time trying to anticipate technology changes.
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh yes.
GARTZKE: And do you think you did a good job that way in the planning?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. Do you think now again we’re 11 years out technology has evolved further, do you think there are other things you could have done or seen or predicted? That’s kind of a hard one.
NOWAKOWSKI: It’s hard for me to answer that because I’ve been away from it for nine years and so what’s happening now and what happens during the jury trials today and whether we have the right capacity today is hard to say. But, when I left I think that we had built in what we needed to have.
GARTZKE: Was there any discussion of the potential for what we call e-filing now that everybody has just gone to, where I don’t walk over to the courthouse to file my complaint or any of my pleadings. Was that something that was talked about some day in the Jetson’s future that we’ll have electronic filing?
NOWAKOWSKI: There was after the courthouse opened, not in the design process, but we had a terrible problem with storage of old case files and what we were going to do with all the paper and so after the courthouse had opened, one of the solutions so to speak, we built in to the new courthouse several “shelled-in courtrooms.”
GARTZKE: “Shelled-in courtrooms”?
NOWAKOWSKI: “Shelled-in courtrooms.”
GARTZKE: Oh yeah, those on the 3rd or 5th floor or something?
NOWAKOWSKI: 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
GARTZKE: 3rd, 4th, and 5th.
NOWAKOWSKI: That are available for expansion so that we’re not going to run up against the same problems that the City-County Building had. This courthouse will serve the county’s needs for who knows how long.
GARTZKE: Each floor can have four circuits on it as I recall.
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Okay. So that’s another 12 circuits that could be in currently but I think there are 19?
NOWAKOWSKI: There are 17.
GARTZKE: That’s almost 100%, well 60% increase I’m sure. My percentages are off. I’ll fix that in the transcript (laughing) so I don’t look so stupid.
NOWAKOWSKI: We’ll let you use your calculator. But one of the things that we used the shelled courts for was storage of court files so that, because they were being stored off site down on East Badger Road and it was very expensive to have these hauled down there and when somebody would need an old court file to have to retrieve it was of course quite inconvenient and expensive, so there was discussion then that someday we won’t have to do this because we’re going to have e-filing.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And there were places in the country where people were beginning to do that kind of system.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And now, of course, it’s being done here, but it changes the culture and the way you do business. When you’re presiding you don’t have a file with the papers that somebody says I’ve filed, you know that letter that was written back in April – now look at that! You don’t go into the file and pull it out, it’s just a whole different animal.
GARTZKE: Yeah, yeah. One of the stories I heard about the courthouse and I would like you to expand on it was it was sold on having the secured prisoners coming up and being held in holding cells so when they could come for court appearances there were dedicated elevators and areas on each floor, but I remember hearing a story that there was a problem at the courthouse as originally built, especially with the doors on those cells. Does that sound right? That the doors that the contractor put in were just hollow core doors and that was not up to specs because the prisoners could basically just push their way through the doors if they chose. Is that some story that never happened?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I don’t think there was ever a danger like that, but there were some problems with the doors, but it wasn’t that it allowed inmates to get out of those cells.
GARTZKE: Well, there was a fear that they could do that, so initially until they could get all the doors fixed, they ended up spending more time with prisoner transport then they thought. But that’s not right it sounds like. You would have been aware of that.
NOWAKOWSKI: Not initially. I don’t think that was true, and if that came up in the last nine years since I retired, I don’t know about it.
GARTZKE: No, I heard the story that it was what happened initially so I must have been misinformed then. Okay, alright.
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I wouldn’t necessarily say you were misinformed, maybe that I’m just misremembering.
GARTZKE: Okay. What do you think would be the most elements for a judge to have in terms of demeanor or a philosophy of judicial demeanor, approach to cases, handling cases? You know, you were never somebody who was jokey on the bench, who would make light of things. I thought you were always very serious to the point, you weren’t going to be chit chatty up there with us. Was that a conscious decision that you did? Was that part of what you were trying to project as a judicial demeanor and is that important or after your - what did you have, you had 24 years of experience on the bench?
NOWAKOWSKI: I can’t even begin to tell you how often I consciously thought about this, but amongst all of the cases that came before me or came before the court system, the number of those cases that were going to be appealed was miniscule. And so for the vast, vast majority when somebody was sitting in front of me I was the supreme court. I was the last judge that they were going to see, and what I said was the last thing they were going to hear from a judge. And, their case to them was for most of them the most important case in the world, and that was the way I felt about it and that was the way I wanted to treat people. And sure I could joke around with lawyers sometimes, but with clients there and with litigants you don’t want to make light of something that is so important to them and that was kind of the way I felt about it.
GARTZKE: So that’s the judicial demeanor aspect of it. Anything else that you think makes for a good judge?
NOWAKOWSKI: The corollary of that is also equally important is that folks that come in front of you to reflect how important that you think like they think, that this is an important case is that you look them in the eye, that you treat them individually. I mean people say why do you treat them with respect, what does that mean? But I always thought that if I called somebody by their name, if I look them in the eye, if I speak to them directly instead of talking to their lawyer, not for 100% of the time, but for a part of the time while they’re in my courtroom, that will give them the feeling that not just that they were heard but that this judge knows how important this is to me, and I really felt that way. The one thing about spending the three days in jail, I can’t even tell you how conscious I was of getting people out of jail fast and how important it was that the DA would say “Well, we’ll get him out first thing in the morning.” “No, I want them out tonight even if it’s 6:30 and you we’re sitting here late, let’s get them out tonight.” Yeah, you spent two nights in jail then, or three? Me?
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: Three.
GARTZKE: Three. Okay, alright. Are there any particular cases over the years that stayed with you that you’d like to talk about? And, I recognize a lot of it you did the first six years on juvenile, that’s still confidential. I’m not asking about those, but anything in particular on the cases?
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, let’s see I started August 1st and I think in October of my first year my clerk comes in and said “Judge, I just got a call from the clerk’s office that we’ve been assigned to a case that they brought over and just filed it and they brought it in shopping carts” and it was an asbestos case.
GARTZKE: Oh!
NOWAKOWSKI: And it was the Sisters of St. Mary’s Hospitals here in Madison and then a couple of other places, suing as a class action on behalf of all other hospitals in the United States and in all US territories and military bases, and in Canada. That was how it started out against 56 companies who manufactured or installed asbestos containing materials. And, this was filed about a year or two after a Philadelphia schools’ asbestos case had been certified as a class action. So, I said “Well, maybe I should take a look at this before they serve this, maybe there’s something I want them to serve with it.” And so I issued a preliminary scheduling order and scheduled a preliminary scheduling hearing for like 90 days after the filing date and I had no idea how many people might show up for this so I scheduled it in the city-county chambers.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And we had I think about 120 lawyers from all over the country and it was my first encounter with a, at that time, young lawyer who I came to believe is really one of the top-notch lawyers in Madison, Tom Piper.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: You know him?
GARTZKE: No, I don’t. He still practicing in Madison?
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh, I’m sure he is.
GARTZKE: Tom Piper huh! Where is he?
NOWAKOWSKI: He’s younger than I am.
GARTZKE: Oh okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: At that time, I think he was with Stafford.
GARTZKE: Okay, huh. So he was on that case huh?
NOWAKOWSKI: He was local counsel for one of the defendants and it was a very heady thing for this brand-new judge because I had to do a pro hac vice admission to allow all these folks to practice law in Wisconsin in this case and so I think there were like 75 lawyers from around the country and I just waived my forearm and admitted them all to practice law in Wisconsin. And that case went on for a long time.
GARTZKE: Case cite, opinion?
NOWAKOWSKI: I don’t know, your dad may have participated in it. I thought Chuck Dykman wrote it.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright. That was American Hospital Association, I wonder was Jim Olson on that case?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright.
NOWAKOWSKI: He was very disappointed by my decision.
GARTZKE: Oh (laughing)
NOWAKOWSKI: And Dick Cates was on it.
GARTZKE: Dick Cates? Any other lawyers that you remember that were memorable who you saw regularly in front of you, if you’re comfortable, and maybe judges are very cautious about recommending lawyers. I don’t know, let’s talk about lawyers.
NOWAKOWSKI: I had a trial, the facts of the case are irrelevant. I mean I can’t even remember what happened, but the trial I remember it was Tom Piper against John Markson.
GARTZKE: Who became a circuit court judge?
NOWAKOWSKI: Indeed. And it was the best tried case I ever had.
GARTZKE: What kind of a case was it?
NOWAKOWSKI: It was a real estate case.
GARTZKE: Jury trial?
NOWAKOWSKI: It involved a case involving a car dealership’s claim that somebody out beyond East Towne had violated the terms of their offer to purchase, and who the hell was it? It was a car dealership……….
GARTZKE: Yeah, like John Lancaster or Clarence Darrow, or not Darrow, no, no that’s a lawyer (ha ha). Yeah, there’s car dealers out past there.
NOWAKOWSKI: And I had a case
GARTZKE: Russ Darrow, Russ Darrow, sorry.
NOWAKOWSKI: With a Stafford lawyer, John Hanson. Do you remember John?
GARTZKE: No. There was a, at that time an old gentlemen who was president of MG&E and who had had an accident or something, I don’t recall what it was and he was prescribed some physical therapy which included riding a stationary bike at the UW facility, and is riding this Schwinn bike and the seat comes off and he ends up hurting himself pretty badly. And so John Hanson from Stafford who for many, many years, I don’t know if they still do, but represented MG&E.
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: John Hanson represented the president of MG&E in this personal injury/products liability case, and Henry Field represented Schwinn and an old gentlemen lawyer from the AG’s office represented the university and never has a trial been conducted in which the lawyers were more deferential to the judge than these folks were.
GARTZKE: Really!
NOWAKOWSKI: They apologized every time they had to make an objection it was…..and I always remember that case.
GARTZKE: Who was that attorney, it wasn’t Torkelson was it at the AG’s office?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: Or McDermott?
NOWAKOWSKI: No.
GARTZKE: Okay, those are the only old timers I know. Huh, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: No, I just can’t remember.
GARTZKE: So those were memorable lawyers. Any others that you were happy to see walk into your courtroom.
NOWAKOWSKI: Claude Covelli.
Gartzke: Oh, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah, there was a streak with Claude Covelli, I think we had maybe two or three trials in a row with Claude and Nick McNamara when he was with Habush.
GARTZKE: Yeah.
NOWAKOWSKI: And they were both classy lawyers, good lawyers.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And Ward Richter.
GARTZKE: I’m trying to think who would have been some of the older lawyers. Were there any particular prosecutors or defense attorneys that you liked to see, because you must have had criminal rotations in there too, right?
NOWAKOWSKI: Oh, I did, I did.
GARTZKE: And I’m not going to ask who you didn’t like because that’s not appropriate.
NOWAKOWSKI: Denny Burke.
GARTZKE: Okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: Denny Burke was just a great lawyer and human being. I had a 980 case.
GARTZKE: I don’t know what that is.
NOWAKOWSKI: Sexual predator case.
GARTZKE: Oh, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: And, the fella who was the subject of this case had been assigned Denny Burke to represent him, and I don’t recall what the dispute was about but the subject was dissatisfied with Denny Burke and so he wanted a new lawyer, and I could not imagine how he could ever hope to get a better lawyer then the one he had, but it was not for me to judge that.
GARTZKE: Yeah
NOWAKOWSKI: But that was a sad day for him.
GARTZKE: Well, so often people would make comments about public defenders to me when I did criminal law and I said they’re the only ones who really do criminal defense work exclusively. You know, they know their way around a courtroom from what I’ve seen of them. I thought they were generally pretty good.
NOWAKOWSKI: Well, and there was a fella who died back in 1995 named Peter Ruben.
GARTZKE: I remember that name. Was he with one of the bigger firms?
NOWAKOWSKI: No, he was a public defender and he was with their juvenile division, and he was just outstanding. Just no nonsense.
GARTZKE: Have you ever had Frank Coyne in front of you?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yes.
GARTZKE: He was a legendary one.
NOWAKOWSKI: The most memorable case I had with Frank Coyne was up in Sauk County back before court reorganization.
GARTZKE: Oh, you were against him.
NOWAKOWSKI: And we tried a products liability case against him and he represented the manufacturer of a lawn mower. And Ray Schrank. Well, a riding lawn mower rolled up on to a little girl and she reached and had several of her fingers cut off and Frank represented the manufacturer of the lawn mower. We tried that up in front of Howard Latton. He was the circuit judge. We had a bunch of dissenting jurors and Howard Latton bumped the verdict.
GARTZKE: Bumped the verdict, meaning he gave a judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah, and we had to take it to the Supreme Court and got him reversed and came back for a second trial and by that time I think Howard had retired and about that time court reorganization had happened where we got a different judge in Sauk County and it was a mishmash, but that was my most involvement with Frank Coyne.
GARTZKE: As opposing counsel?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah.
GARTZKE: Yeah, okay.
NOWAKOWSKI: But I had a whole lot more involvement with Rick Niess, both when he was a lawyer appearing in front of me and of course after he was a judge.
GARTZKE: Okay, alright, because he was an associate and then a partner of Frank Coyne’s.
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah. He is just an outstanding lawyer and a judge.
GARTZKE: And he was a good lawyer too.
NOWAKOWSKI: He was.
GARTZKE: Any other lawyers that stand out over the years again that you were happy to see them walk into the courtroom or see their names on briefs?
NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah, he taught welfare law and administrative law. He and his wife lived in a little farmette down in Verona and they built a sort of a barn I guess you could call it, and during that summer of, it must have been 1973 I guess, and I was his law clerk, or his TA. He also knew that we were sort of hurting for money and being a TA was not a particularly lucrative job, so he hired me to paint his barn, so he wanted it painted in time for a party that he was hosting at his house in his barn in October of ‘73 and it was on this particular Saturday, it was the night of the Saturday night massacre.
GARTZKE: Nixon.
NOWAKOWSKI: By Nixon with Elliott Richardson and so on. Well, can you imagine what it was like to be the only non-lawyer, I mean it was all law school professors. But he invited my wife and I to come to it and so we did and to be at this event and amongst them talking about the constitutional crisis that the country was facing, it was quite an event.
GARTZKE: Good. Well, we had just about 2 hours so we can continue it. What I am going to do is stop it now, but we’ll come back for it. I don’t know, do you want to do a round 2 at some point. Do you have a lot more to say? Well, here I’m going to stop it.