Born: Thursday, January 22nd, 1863
Died: Wednesday, January 10th, 1917
Birthplace: Wyanet, Illinois
Religion: Congregational
Education: Albany Law School, LL.B. (1883)
Career: Probate Judge (1887-1890)
Prosecuting Attorney (1893-1897)
Served: Thursday, January 19th, 1905 to Wednesday, December 2nd, 1908
Political Party: Republican
Appointing Governor: Mead (Republican)
Milo Root was born in a small town in north-central Illinois to William H. and Sarah Cordelia (Holroyd) Root. When Milo was thirteen the family moved to Albion, New York, where he attended high school. The future judge enrolled in Albany Law School and, graduating at age twenty in 1883, immediately headed west to Olympia. Root worked as a lumber camp laborer and taught school in Elma for a term while waiting to reach age twenty-one and become eligible for admission to the bar. Upon admittance in 1884, Root opened a law office in Olympia and in 1888 formed a partnership with future supreme court jurist John R. Mitchell.Root served two terms as Thurston County Probate Judge (1887-1890) and twice won election as Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney (1893-1897). He participated in commercial and civic affairs while in Olympia, serving on the Olympia board of trade and as first vice president of the Olympia Young Men’s Christian Association. In 1897 he moved to Seattle to open an office in partnership with former supreme court Justice John P. Hoyt. Later he became the senior partner in Root, Palmer, and Brown.
While in Seattle, Root involved himself minimally in Republican politics but devoted considerable time to civic affairs. He became the first president of the Seattle Civic Union, president of the Washington Society of Charities and Corrections, and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and the Masons. He was also a member of “several secret societies” and a “trustee in several charity and benevolent organizations.”
Judge Root married Anna Evelyn Lansdale in 1890 and they had five daughters and one son. The Roots belonged to the Congregational Church.
When the legislature expanded the supreme court membership from five to seven in 1905, Root notified Governor Albert E. Mead of his availability:
I am informed that there is likelihood of a law being enacted increasing the membership of the Supreme Court. .. The matter of my being a candidate for one of the appointments has been kindly suggested. But until about ten days ago I did not decide to ask for one of the appointments. Thus I told Mr. Palmer and Mr. Brown, my partners, that I would like the appointment … if it could be had without a scramble or unseemly effort on my part. So I now repeat the same statement to you.
Root had considerable support. Various endorsements described him as “a man among men,” a “conscientious, public-spirited man,” “above reproach,” “an advocate of clean politics.” Walter Beals, who later sat on the supreme court, wrote that “Judge Root is particularly the friend of the young lawyer, freely placing his large knowledge and experience at the service of the younger members of the bar here.” Governor Mead, himself an attorney, knew of Root’s abilities. Geographical considerations weighed heavily with the governor when he selected Root from Seattle for one position and Herman D. Crow from Spokane for the other.
Judge Root’s promising career took an abrupt turn downward in 1908 with a legal dispute involving the Great Northern Railway Company. Root, along with a majority of the court, sided with the claimant in a suit against the railroad. The court denied a petition for rehearing, but in a brief, unsigned per curiam decision Judge Root modified some aspects of the original ruling, apparently upon the request of M. J. Gordon, attorney for the railroad. This allowed the railroad to avoid similar liability claims in the future. To some observers something seemed amiss when a denial of a petition for a rehearing resulted in a modification favorable to the railroad. Judge Root requested that Chief Justice Hiram Hadley appoint an investigating committee to clarify the situation and stifle the many rumors circulating in the legal community. The state bar association agreed to review the matter. However, before it appointed a committee, Judge Root submitted his resignation to Governor Mead, effective immediately. Only two months earlier Root had won nomination for another six-year term and on November 3 voters had reelected him.
Although Root’s resignation came before the bar’s committee reported, the judge gave his version of the situation in his letter of resignation:
At different periods I have held the offices of probate judge, prosecuting attorney and judge of the supreme court. In each of these positions I have been attacked and have resisted attack successfully. My record has been finally approved by the people of this state by election to the high office with which I am now honored.
But human nature has its limits of endurance. The final linking of my name with a scandal attached to a former justice of the supreme court who for years has been a warm and, as I believed, a devoted friend of mine, is the culmination of a series of calamities.
My relations with Judge [Merritt] Gordon will bear the closest investigation and will reflect no more upon me than indiscretions of friendship. Yet I realize that for a justice of the supreme court there should exist not even an indiscretion; especially as I realize that any reflections upon any member casts a cloud upon the entire court; and I do not wish to be the means of casting any such cloud even in the slightest degree.
On January 7, 1909 the state bar association’s special committee made its report:
We are constrained to conclude that the conduct of Judge Root. .. was a gross breach of judicial and professional propriety. Such conduct would be intolerable in practice and would lead to abuses almost as serious as would corruption itself. It has been characterized by Judge Root himself as an imprudence, but in our opinion it deserves much more severe characterization and shows such want to appreciation of duties of a judge of the supreme court as to unfit him from occupying that position.
On January 12, Milo Root again wrote the governor, laying out his response to the committee:
As I stated to the committee I now repeat, that my actions in that matter were solely on the view that the court should decide correctly a point of law. This was done, and the opinion in the case rendered which I believe then, and believe now, as sound law, and in this I believe I am supported by other judges and most of the lawyers in the state. I did not act from evil motive or for the purpose of giving one litigant an undue advantage over another. The case was decided against the railroad company both times…
Touching these matters, and all others criticized by the report, I desire to say emphatically that any mistake I made was one of the head and not of the heart. As a member of the court I always worked hard and endeavored to be fair and just to all parties, and I never rendered or assisted to render a decision that I did not honestly believe to be the law.
At its annual meeting the state bar association accepted the report of the investigating committee and passed a resolution referring the report to the grievance committee to “cause disbarment proceedings to be instituted against Milo A. Root, if in the judgment of said committee such proceedings can be successfully maintained.” The grievance committee did not institute proceedings and the entire matter appeared to have been resolved and forgotten.
In the fall of 1916, Judge Root announced his intention to run for the King County Superior Court. Since leaving the high court, Root had devoted himself to legal and civic affairs in Seattle. He sat often as special judge on the trial bench, served as president of the Beacon Hill Improvement Club, was a trustee of the Washington Children’s Home Society, and involved himself in the city’s social life. Some elements of the legal profession threatened to bring out the 1908 affair again if Root filed for the superior court position. He refused to withdraw and the Seattle Bar Association voted to publish condemnation of his candidacy. The profession felt that the 1908 incident would “seriously impair his fitness as judge of the Superior Court of this county and would tend to bring the bench into disrepute.” Root countered, claiming his resignation from the supreme court was a mistake.” The Seattle bar requested “the press of King County to publish the 1908 report,” which it did. Judge Root lost the election.
In defense of Root, The Seattle Legal News claimed that corporate lawyers did not want to see Root return to the bench, for he had made powerful enemies:
The opinion of Judge Root [against the railroads in Smith v. St. Paul, Milwaukee and Minnesota Railway Company] together with his decision upholding the eight hour law [Normile v. Thompson] and his decision holding that keeping a place for selling pools on horse races was prohibited by the gambling statutes. [State v. Shanklin] and his decision against letting technicalities defeat substantial justice [Douglas v. Badger St.] and other similar decisions, may explain why certain “interests” did not want Judge Root to remain on the bench … Action[s] speak louder than words.
Whatever the motives of those who wanted Root removed from the judiciary and whatever his motives in dealing with M. J. Gordon, Root appeared to be a tragic figure caught up in affairs not of his making. In January 1917 shortly after his censure by the Seattle Bar Association, Judge Root passed away in Seattle from pleurisy and pneumonia.
Selected References
W. C. Wolfe, Sketches of Washingtonians (1906), p. 272; Washington State Bar Association Proceedings (1909), pp. 121-130; Seattle Times, 12 Jan. 1916 and. 2 Nov. 1916, Charles Sheldon, A Century of Judging: A Political History of the Washington Supreme Court (1988), pp. 40, 44, 54-56,217.
The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.
