LaBuy, Walter J.

Judge Walter J. LaBuy (1888-1967) was a federal and Circuit Court judge, serving in Illinois for 44 years. LaBuy, a native of Wisconsin, received his law degree from DePaul University and entered practice in 1912. He was elected to the Cook County Board in 1930, then elected a circuit judge in 1933, becoming Chief Justice of the Circuit Court in 1935. In 1944, LaBuy was appointed to the federal bench by Franklin D. Roosevelt. His most high-profile case was the DuPont-General Motors anti-trust case. LaBuy ruled that E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company need not sell nor distribute its 63,000,000 shares of GM stock. LaBuy officially retired from the Northern District of the U.S. District Court in 1961, but continued to hear cases until his death in 1967. In 1962, he collaborated on a book of jury instructions that came to be used in federal courts throughout the nation.