Peru attorney Anthony C. Raccuglia recently was named one of Chicago magazine’s “Illinois Super Lawyers” in a list of the state’s 100 best attorneys drawn from a field of nearly 47,000.

“There’s no one better,” said friend and colleague John Balestri. “Without hesitation I say that. He has a sterling reputation as an attorney and as a human being.”

Raccuglia said he was honored to be included among the “Super Lawyers,” and pleased to be one of just two attorneys named from downstate Illinois. (Peoria’s Rex Linder was the other.) He modestly attributed his success to the people of the Illinois Valley area who have supported his practice.

Weger case

Raccuglia, 71, prosecuted Chester Weger, the so-called Starved Rock murderer, and has run a successful private practice since 1968, specializing in personal injury.

The juries here, certainly, have been very good to him. Just six Ottawa cases have resulted in awards of $1 million or more, and Raccuglia has been on the winning side of four of them — all personal injury verdicts between 1995 and 2003. He also persuaded a jury in Princeton to hand down Princeton’s only million-plus verdict, in a wrongful death case stemming from a car-truck accident, in 2005. Many more of his cases have been settled for large sums.

At the outset of his career Raccuglia’s colleagues strenuously urged him to practice in Chicago, believing there was no money to be made among La Salle County’s conservative juries. He eventually proved them wrong, in part, by ensuring his office had the same computers and resources found in the big Chicago firms.

Raccuglia also has worked to maintain a comparatively low turnover rate. Several office workers have been with him 20 years or more, including associates Jim McPhedran and Louis Bertrand.

“I try to make this office something like a family,” he said. “I’m not ‘Mr. Raccuglia,’ I’m Tony. I’m interested in the people that work for me. I’m interested in their problems and their families and I care about them.”

Unabashed workaholic

That is not to say Raccuglia and Associates is an easy place to work. He is an unabashed workaholic who typically logs seven days at the office and has difficulty relaxing.

Each year he schedules a weeklong Florida golf outing with Balestri, but Raccuglia has never lasted an entire week.

“We’d come back after the first round and there’d be a note on the table saying he caught an early flight and there’d be some money left for his share of the room,” Balestri said. “He’s a great escape artist.”

Long hours and short vacations are expected from his subordinates, too, and there was no bending of the rules when his daughter, Cindy ,joined the practice.

Eager to impress her father, she began spending weekends at the office and found that while emulating her industrious father was difficult, matching his integrity was harder still. She once approached her father and informed him that one of her clients, if called to testify, would jeopardize her case. What should she do?

“He said to me, ‘You lose,’” recalled Judge Cynthia M. Raccuglia, La Salle County’s first circuit judge. “He was mad at me for even suggesting that I urge the client to stretch the truth.”

Baseball aspirations

Born in La Salle to immigrant Italian parents, Raccuglia aspired to play pro baseball and his speed and good swing earned him a spot in the Washington Senators organization. He reached the modern equivalent of Double-A before being drafted into the Army, after which he gave pro baseball another brief try.

“I’m 5 foot 6 in my heels,” he joked, “and in those days, being as short as I am, it was difficult to get at-bats.”

At the urging of his late wife, the former Shirley Murtaugh of Oglesby, he went back to school.

With a breakneck course load, he finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois and obtained his law degree from Chicago’s John Marshall Law School in just five years.

The round-the-clock studies were a good rehearsal for what lay ahead. After graduating in 1959, he accepted a job as first assistant to La Salle County state’s attorney Bill Richardson and quickly was handed the Weger case.

In the 1960s, it was permissible — indeed, necessary — for low-paid prosecutors to have a private practice on the side.

As a law student, Raccuglia had clerked for respected Chicago personal injury lawyer Fred Lambruschi and began gravitating toward slip-and-fall cases when he wasn’t prosecuting burglaries or placing children into foster homes, a task he found particularly loathsome.


(http://www.newstrib.com/main.asp?SectionID=87&ArticleID=16942&SubSectionID=323)


Raccuglia the Laureate


LaSalle-Peru attorney Anthony C. Raccuglia, respected for his affection for the law and how it can benefit people, is among 12 exemplary Illinois attorneys who have been named Laureates of the Academy of Illinois Lawyers established in 1999 by the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA).

The Laureates will be honored at a dinner on Thursday, January 30, 2003, at The Standard Club of Chicago.

In his nomination of Raccuglia, Ottawa attorney Michael T. Regan wrote: "At every turn, he has practiced at the very highest level."

Graduating first in his class at The John Marshall Law School in 1959, he was awarded membership in the select Order of John Marshall. Appointed first assistant LaSalle County State’s Attorney in 1960, he was soon involved in the prosecution of a man for the murders of three women in Starved Rock State Park. He served on the ISBA Board of Governors for several years and is a past president of the LaSalle County Bar Association.

Raccuglia’s charitable work is extensive, yet most of it remains private and unheralded. He helped establish a free clinic that the local Elks Lodge provided for physically-disabled children, and he also chaired several Lions Club fundraisers for


ISBA/RACCUGLIA

polio victims. The LaSalle city attorney has accepted numerous pro bono assignments from the Prairie State Legal Services over a 20-year period.

Other members of the 2003 class of Laureates are as follows: Barry S. Alberts; James Demos (posthumous); Joseph N. DuCanto; Theodora "Teddy" Gordon (posthumous); Dolores K. Hanna; Elmer Jenkins; Harold Levine; Hon. Prentice H. Marshall; Madalyn Maxwell; Nat P. Ozmon; and William R. Quinlan.

"The Academy of Illinois Lawyers was established to enhance the honor and dignity of the Bar of Illinois by recognizing lawyers who personify the highest ideals of the legal profession," said J. William Roberts, of Springfield, Chancellor of the Academy’s Board of Regents.

The Laureates were selected by the Board of Regents from submitted nominations, he said. To be eligible for selection, candidates must have practiced law primarily in Illinois for at least 25 years, must be a member of the Illinois State Bar Association, and must have demonstrated a commitment to the highest principles of the legal profession and to serving the public.

The 35,000-member ISBA, with offices in Springfield and Chicago, provides professional services to Illinois lawyers, and education and services to the public.

(http://www.illinoisbar.org/News/2003releases/evanston.htm)