Roundtable with Judge Coleman

Sharon Johnson Coleman (born 1960) is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She was formerly a justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, 3rd Division. We are co-sponsoring this event with BLSA and plan to leave time for Q&A at the end. 

Judge Coleman has presided over a number of high-profile cases. Among those are a ruling that enabled same sex couples to marry in February 2014 in advance of the June 2014 effective date for same sex marriages in Illinois. In 2015, Judge Coleman sentenced former Illinois Representative Derrick Smith to five months in prison for a bribery conviction related to pocketing a bribe from a purported day care. Smith also was ordered to serve a year of supervised release and complete 360 hours of community service. During a patent infringement case revolving around electronic trading software patents, Judge Coleman granted default judgment to Chicago-based Trading Technologies International Inc. after Rosenthal Collins and Trading Technologies counter-sued each other and litigated for nearly six years. Judge Coleman also ordered sanctions against Rosenthal Collins after finding that a company witness had wiped computer disks that allegedly contained evidence relevant to the case and misrepresented his actions to the court.