Boylan’s marching orders: Get it settled

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The NFL lockout case was already few weeks old, and during one marathon negotiation session John Mara, the third generation owner of the New York Giants, had seen enough. His voice rising, Mara stood up and announced to the room of his fellow owners, union representatives and high priced lawyers that he was fed up and he was leaving.

Judge Arthur Boylan calmly waited for Mara to finish and then looked right at him.

“I told him, ‘John, let’s make one thing clear: No one is going anywhere until I say so,” Boylan recalled recently. “I’m the lowest paid guy in this room, by a long shot, but I’m in charge here. No one is leaving.”

When the lockout eventually settled in July 2011, Boylan said Mara apologized for his outburst. Boylan credits Mara’s positive influence as one of the deciding factors in the final settlement.

Over a nearly 17-year career as Magistrate Judge for the District of Minnesota, Boylan did whatever was necessary to settle cases. If that meant talking to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell from the kitchen of his cousin’s home in Ireland, learning the pertinent medical technology to oversee a $240 million settlement with almost 2,000 claimants or telling a man with an estimated net worth of $500 million that he wasn’t going anywhere, Boylan’s focus was on settling the case and moving on to the next one.

“For me I never felt good about reporting that we made a lot of progress. I hated that. I wasn’t just satisfied with narrowing the gap. Unless you can get it settled, on the record and into the Outbox, it doesn’t do anyone any good. I used to really drive for settlements because that is how I was evaluated,” he said.

Boylan is retiring Jan. 8. After a few weeks of vacation, he plans to go into private mediation.  He turned 65 on Dec. 18 and said in a recent interview that it’s time to move on to the next phase of his career. He said he has a passion for the work, and after 27 years as a state or a federal judge, he has developed a style and the qualities that make him good at getting parties, even those that can’t stand each other, to take the long view.

“I have a lot of patience and good listening skills. I can read between the lines, pick up signals and cues to what people are saying. My job is not to decide which side got the better deal, but to get both sides to agree regardless of what I think the merits of the case are,” he said.

Boylan’s retirement will leave a huge hole, said Bob Weinstine, one of the founding partners of Winthrop & Weinstine in Minneapolis.

“I can’t tell you how many times I walked in to an ordered mediation with him and I was convinced that the case wouldn’t settle. But then at the end of the day, we walked out with a deal,” Weinstine said. “It’s just an incredible skill he has to get people to say, ‘yes.’”

Boylan was always prepared for the case and knew the memos and sticking points forward and backward, Weinstine said. He didn’t strong arm parties or use tricks. Instead, his style was to take a personal interest in the litigants and learn about what they do and what they were like. He routinely had both sides sit down in his chambers before they started to lay all the cards down on the table.

Peter Carter, a litigator at Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis, said Boylan made himself available at all hours to continue mediation talks, even when that spilled into his vacation time. He didn’t shy away from the tough issues in the case and worked to create trust with parties to move past the hostilities of complex, expensive litigation.

He is relentless at keeping the mediation going, Carter said.

“He would have these conversations with everyone involved that I think he used to get a sense of what the person was like, who in the group can make the decisions, who can he do business with and then who in the room was going to sabotage any progress,” Weinstine said. “I think he wanted both sides to know everything that maybe their own lawyer didn’t share with them.”

Chuck Webber, a trial lawyer at Faegre Baker Daniels, had many cases with Boylan. He said Boylan’s style was part Minnesota Nice and part practicality.

“One of the toughest jobs a mediator has is to convince the parties that a reasonable solution to their dispute is preferable than staying the course and continuing the fight, he said. “Judge Boylan was extremely talented at getting the two sides to set their principles aside and guiding them to an outcome everyone could be happy with. He was persistent and he was diligent, but he didn’t coerce anyone.”

Boylan grew up in Chicago, graduated from St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., and then Chicago Kent College of Law in 1976. For 10 years he worked in private practice in Willmar, Minn., at the firm Anderson, Larson, Hanson & Saunders. He was appointed to the district court bench in the 8th Judicial District in 1986. He was appointed a federal magistrate judge in November 1996. He is the past president of the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and served many roles in the Minnesota State Bar Association. He is an avid curler, and he and his wife, Kate, have three adult children.

Boylan said the NFL lockout case was the toughest case in his career. It had everything: a lot of parties —the owners, the players and a group of retired players — a lot of money and a lot of attention.  Reporters from all over the country were camped outside of his chambers, and casual sports fans started studying up on collective bargaining agreements.

To accommodate the crowd, Boylan redecorated his chambers. He set up a big white board on one end and took out the conference tables and set up seating for about 40 people. When he needed to separate the sides, he stuck the owners’ and the players’ representatives and lawyers in two small jury rooms and the retired players’ retinue was holed up in an ante room down the hall.

One of the frustrations was each side routinely broke the promise not to talk to the press after the day’s work was done. There were too many days when Boylan said they spend the morning arguing about who said what to who before they could start making headway again.

The most important conversations took place behind the scenes. Boylan had regular meals with the union and the owners, and they bounced around the country to have settlement discussions. The first breakthrough came in Chicago, but it was almost undone by the arrival of the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

Boylan had a meeting in Chicago for the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Safety.  When the parties found out they suggested an out-of-the-spotlight meeting in the Chicago area. Boylan agreed. A settlement conference was scheduled at a hotel in St. Charles, Ill. about 40 miles west of Chicago.

“Everyone said the meeting was going to be top secret,” Boylan recalled. “Well then Jerry Jones flies in to town with his big plane and the Cowboy logo on the tail and he’s out buying drinks that night across the street from the hotel.”

So much for low-key talks. “But it was that first meeting out-of-town where we got moving,” Boylan said.

The case eventually settled while Boylan was on vacation in Ireland. One night he got a call from Goodell, the NFL commissioner, who told Boylan they had a deal. He flew back to New York to put the finishing touches on it.

Dealing with the egos and the attention that comes with a group of billionaire NFL owners and millionaire NFL players took up a lot of his time and attention, but there were other cases. And those cases needed to be settled too.

“I had an employment case right in the middle of the NFL talks. I told the lawyer, ‘I’m not moving your settlement. You still have the date, but you have to come to Faegre because that’s where I am meeting with the NFL guys.’ So they found a room for them and I settled that case in between sessions with the NFL. I went from a billion dollar case to one for maybe $100,000. But you know what, it was important to those people.”