George Saunders was a longtime Chicago trial lawyer and partner at the Sidley Austin law firm who was a key advocate for AT&T during landmark antitrust litigation, including the case that in 1982 broke up the Bell System’s monopoly on local telephone service in the U.S.
“George’s approach to practicing law centered on story — in every case, he wanted to be sure that we told the client’s side of the story, (and) it had to be truthful and complete, and the story had to make sense,” said Tom Doyle, a longtime colleague and law partner. “He had a knack for figuring out how to focus on the key events and then relate the facts persuasively.”
Saunders, 92, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease on June 13 at his home, said his wife of 48 years, Terry. He had been a longtime Streeterville resident.
George Lawton Saunders was born in Mulga, Alabama, outside of Birmingham. He grew up in Birmingham, and at age 15, he graduated from Woodlawn High School in Birmingham. He then worked various jobs, including clerical jobs and as a salesman in a men’s clothing store before he joined the Air Force in 1951.
During his time in the Air Force, Saunders was assigned to the Defense Language Institute’s school in Monterey, California, where he learned Polish. He then was based in Germany for two years in the Air Force’s security service before returning to the U.S. and working for the National Security Agency.
After leaving the Air Force, Saunders enrolled at the University of Alabama, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956. He then earned a law degree in 1959 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the school’s law review.
Right after law school, Saunders was a law clerk for one year for an Alabama-based federal appellate judge, Richard Rives. He then served for two years as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black.
In 1962, Saunders joined Sidley Austin, which at that time was known as Sidley, Austin, Burgess and Smith. He was promoted to partner in 1966 and later served on the firm’s executive committee.
During his law practice, Saunders specialized in representing regulated industries before regulatory agencies and during appellate proceedings. His clients included railroads, electric utilities, natural gas firms and telecommunications companies.
“George was a distinctive intelligence in a world of very intelligent people,” retired Sidley Austin partner R. Eden Martin said. “George stood out. George had an enormous intelligence and an enormous appetite for analysis, and it was remarkable entertainment for someone like me to watch him argue.”
Saunders probably was most known for his defenses of telecommunications giant AT&T during antitrust litigation against AT&T both in Chicago and in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s. He defended AT&T in the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against the firm that was filed in 1974. That suit ended with AT&T agreeing to the breakup of the Bell System, which entailed the regional Bell operating companies, or “Baby Bells” — which provided local phone service — becoming independent entities.
Saunders also defended AT&T in an antitrust lawsuit that a smaller telecommunications firm, MCI, had filed against it in federal court in Chicago in 1974. MCI had alleged that AT&T had illegally worked to keep its smaller competitor from competing for business to provide private lines for long-distance telephone service.
Saunders represented AT&T as outside counsel, and in 1980, AT&T lost the suit, with a Chicago jury ordering the company to pay its rival $1.8 billion in what at that time was the largest antitrust trial verdict in U.S. history.
Saunders was both dramatic and philosophical after the case concluded, suggesting to the Tribune that the jury system may have suffered irreversible damage and conceding that the massive award would “probably make the Guinness Book of World Records.”
“In a case like this, no defendant has won before a jury in 25 years,” he told the Tribune after the verdict. “But they are inevitably reversed. This verdict is so clearly wrong.”
Saunders’ prognostication was correct. In 1983, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago partly reversed the verdict, ruling that AT&T was guilty of some but not all of the antitrust actions. The appeals court also threw out the $1.8 billion award and ordered new damages to be calculated. A new federal jury in Chicago awarded MCI $113 million in damages in early 1985, and several months later, the two sides settled the case out of court.
“George relished a challenge presented by cases raising difficult issues often of first impression — the more difficult the better,” said Ted Miller, a former colleague at Sidley who practiced alongside Saunders for more than 20 years. “Nowhere was George’s embrace of an unprecedented challenge more evident than in his representation of AT&T and the then-Bell System in the antitrust battle. George had a masterful ability to develop a legal strategy that wove a complex set of facts with legal precedent — sometimes decades old, to tell a compelling story.”
In 1990, Saunders shifted gears in his career, choosing to leave Sidley Austin to form his own firm, Saunders & Monroe. He focused his new firm on cases representing plaintiff groups, and he specialized in complex litigation, including civil actions by classes of plaintiffs. After winding down Saunders & Monroe in the early 2010s, he joined the Saunders Law Firm, which his wife had started, in an of counsel capacity.
“He loved every aspect of practicing law,” his wife said. “He loved to tackle a new case or issue and think about it until he figured it out. And then he would keep refining his thinking and his writing. He almost always had a novel approach to an issue. He never stopped thinking about what he was working on.”
Saunders retired from practicing law in 2019, although he continued to think, talk and write about the law, his wife said. Outside of work and during retirement, Saunders enjoyed following University of Alabama football, traveling, golfing, doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, spending time at his home in Michigan, and going to the theater, the opera and the symphony.
Two previous marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Saunders is survived by two sons, Kenneth and Ralph; a daughter, Victoria Kaplan; five grandchildren; and a brother, Alan.
Services will be private.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.