Last year, while reflecting on a career that spanned four decades, U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani framed her judicial approach in the most basic of terms.
“You look at a case with an open mind, listen, and then apply the law,” Battani said in an interview upon her retirement. “It’s as simple as that. It really is.”
Such methodical thinking came by way of her mastery of mathematics, which was her major at the University of Detroit. It also served her well while working with one of the titans of the tech industry, IBM, a company that interestingly enough would help fuel her interest in pursuing a legal career.
That career choice, in many respects, allowed Battani to display an array of other talents that would make her one of the most admired, trusted, and respected judges on the federal bench before she retired last December while in the throes of a cancer battle.
On September 9, that battle came to an end, as the 77-year-old Battani passed away peacefully at her Oakland County home surrounded by friends and family. She was remembered at a Funeral Mass four days later as a top-notch jurist known for her legal intellect, fairness, compassion, and a pleasant, professional courtroom demeanor (see eulogy below).
Yet, her career in the law was just part of a remarkable life story.
Marianne Olga Battani was born in Detroit in 1944, the second of four daughters who grew up on the city’s far eastside. Her father was a tool and die maker, and her mother was a homemaker.
After her father became ill and could no longer work, her mother, at age 57, became a waitress at Somerset Inn in Troy. Zelinda Battani was such an exceptional worker, Somerset Inn renamed a small café after her, “Zelinda’s Express.”
Battani credited her parents for providing her with the determination to achieve her goals – but not in the way some might think.
She said her father, John, a first-generation Italian, did not believe women should work outside the home or go to college. But it apparently had not occurred to him that the college preparatory courses his daughter was acing at Dominican High School, an all-girls Catholic academy on Detroit’s eastside, were grooming Battani for both.
Battani said her father “had a fit” when she informed him that she planned to enroll in college, but that he relented when she agreed to attend the University of Detroit and become a teacher. She was the first person in her family to attend college and graduated with honors in 1966 with a math degree.
But teaching math wasn’t in her career cards. During her senior year in college, IBM recruited her to become a systems engineer in Detroit.
“So, my father had another fit, insisting that systems engineering was a man’s job,” Battani said with a chuckle during an interview last year.
Once again, she stood firm.
In 1968, she decided to enroll in a contracts course at Detroit College of Law to better deal with a project at work. But when she discovered the tuition fee for a single course was the same as taking a full load, she decided to become a full-time student, working at IBM during the day and studying the law at night.
Once again, and to no avail, her father protested, insisting that becoming a lawyer “was a man’s job.”
But the law had become Battani’s career passion, and she received her law degree with honors in 1972. She said her entire family joined in the celebration – including her father, who reportedly beamed with pride the entire day.
Battani was offered a job with a small Detroit firm, the Law Offices of Donald Gratrix, but only after Mr. Gratrix checked with clients to see if they would accept a female lawyer. Two years later, she opened her own firm, the Law Office of Marianne O. Battani, specializing primarily in family law.
In 1980, her law associate, Beverly Clark, urged her to run for an open seat on the Wayne County Circuit Court.
“I had no political background, no name recognition and knew nothing about campaigning,” Battani recalled.
But she ran anyway and recruited her sister Susan, who also was a political neophyte, to become her campaign manager. Battani ran an exceptional campaign and went to bed on election night believing she had won only to discover the next morning that she had lost after absentee ballots were counted.
Her disappointment did not last long.
Two months after the election, then-Gov. William G. Milliken appointed her to a vacancy on Detroit Common Pleas Court, the forerunner of the 36th District Court.
“It was a real shocker,” Battani said last year. “I didn’t know the governor, and to this day, I have no idea how he found out about me.”
The governor wasn’t finished with Battani. In 1982, Milliken appointed her to a vacancy on Wayne County Circuit Court. She won election four times, served as chief judge pro tem from 1982-92, and played a key role in developing a system that significantly shortened the time it took cases to get to trial.
She also made news.
In 1986, she ruled that a couple would be listed on a birth certificate as the parents of their test-tube baby that was carried to term by a surrogate mother. It was believed to be the nation's first legal opinion to determine the parentage of a test tube baby. Best-selling author James Patterson even quoted her in “The Lake House,” his 2003 novel about extraordinary children: “We really have no definition of mother in our law books. Mother was believed to have been so basic that no definition was necessary.”
Perhaps influenced by the controversy, Battani became a mother herself. She went to Paraguay in 1989 to adopt an infant girl she named Amanda, referring to the event as “the most important accomplishment of my life.”
In addition to her other activities, Battani served on the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, the state’s judicial watchdog group, from 1991-2000, including the final two years as chair.
Battani also served on the Board of Trustees of the Detroit College of Law (DCL) now Michigan State University College of Law, from 1984-99, participating in its transition from small city school to major university. She served as secretary from 1994-99.
In August 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated her for a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, based on a recommendation from U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. She and U.S. District Judge David Lawson were selected from a field of 120 candidates.
The U.S. Senate confirmed her in May 2000, and she was sworn in on June 2, 2000.
During her 20-year tenure as a federal judge, she handled a diverse docket of civil and criminal litigation.
In 2005, she sentenced Wilbourne Kelley III, 69, to 44 months in prison, and his wife, Barbara, 57, to 41 months, following their conviction for extortion, bribery, embezzlement and making false statements to the FBI. Prosecutors said Kelley, former Wayne County Deputy Chief Operating Officer who oversaw contracts at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, accepted more than $125,000 from a contractor who had been awarded $20 million in airport contracts.
In 2006, Battani played a small part in the ongoing mystery of Teamsters boss James R. Hoffa, who vanished and presumably was murdered by the mob 31 years earlier. She denied a request by The Detroit Free Press to unseal a search warrant and supporting affidavit authorizing what turned out to be a failed search of a horse farm in Milford for Hoffa’s remains. She declined to place the court in the role of advising the government as to how best to investigate cold cases by setting arbitrary time restrictions on how long the government could proceed with an investigation in secrecy.
In March 2007, Battani revoked the citizenship of retired Troy autoworker John Kalymon, 85, who persecuted Jews during World War II as an armed Ukrainian Auxiliary police private in Nazi-occupied L’viv, in what now is Ukraine. Battani concluded that Kalymon had lied about his war record in obtaining U.S. citizenship. He died before federal authorities could deport him.
In November 2009, Battani sentenced Alan M. Ralsky, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Spam” to 51 months for his role in an international stock fraud scheme that involved the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mails, or "spamming," to drive up the prices of stocks. She also ordered him to forfeit $250,000 seized by the government in December 2007.
In January 2018, she sentenced Roger Tam, 56, a Novi restaurant owner, to nine months in prison for harboring five illegal Mexican immigrant workers who died in a fire in the basement of his home due to careless smoking. Battani spared Tam’s wife, Ada Lei, of prison time, but ordered the couple to pay $173,999 to the victims’ families. Battani called it a difficult case but concluded that the couple didn't recklessly create a "substantial risk of death," a key finding that kept the sentencing guidelines to a year or less.
From 2012-20, Battani presided over the largest automotive price-fixing civil case in U.S. history. The federal criminal prosecution that preceded the civil case resulted in hefty fines and prison time for scores of auto supply executives and their companies for rigging bids and fixing prices of auto parts installed in vehicles sold in the U.S for decades. The criminal case spawned scores of class action lawsuits and the Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Litigation tapped Battani to handle the initial cases, which involved more than 40 automotive parts and resulted in more than a billion dollars in settlements for victims of the scheme.
Battani took senior status in 2012 but continued with a full caseload. President Obama appointed attorney Matthew Leitman to fill the vacancy.
Her judicial career ended December 31, 2020, when she went on inactive status.
“It has been my great joy to work with you and to create so many friendships,” Battani said in a farewell letter to her colleagues. “Thank you for all your help and support through the years, especially this last year,” she added, referring to cancer treatments that began in 2019.
“I’ve had a marvelous career,” Battani said. “I think it’s the best job around.”
Asked how she would like history to remember her, she said: “As a fair and just judge.”
(Researched and written by David Ashenfelter, Public Information Officer for the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Tom Kirvan, of The Detroit Legal News, also contributed to this report.)
Late federal judge remembered as ‘noble, worthy, and inspired’
On Monday, Sept. 13, a Funeral Mass was held for U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani, a member of the Eastern District of Michigan bench for 20 years before retiring. The Mass took place at St. Regis Catholic Church in Bloomfield Hills, where her longtime colleague, U.S. District Judge David Lawson, delivered the following eulogy.
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We all have gathered here today to celebrate the life and honor the memory of Marianne Olga Battani, our colleague, our mentor, our role model, our friend. When someone we love and respect passes over, we naturally think about the place she inhabited in our own life. And we share stories and maybe reflect on how she touched us and even changed us.
But for those of us here today who knew and loved Marianne, our remembrance takes on a larger dimension, and, I think, a greater opportunity to learn from the fearlessness and openness with which she lived her life. Because the true measure of the honor that we pay to the memory of a person is the way we — those of us she has left behind — promote and champion the values that Marianne cherished and exemplified throughout her time with us.
Judge Battani came to our bench in the Eastern District of Michigan in 2000 and almost immediately earned a reputation among federal practitioners as a hard worker, sensible, compassionate, and efficient. That was no surprise to those who knew her from the state courts. All of us came to know her as a gifted colleague and a loyal friend. She has been a source of wise counsel and sage advice. She knew that good judgment comes from experience, but that experience is not so easy to come by and can be fraught with mistakes and bad decisions. So, she was tolerant and slow to criticize those lawyers and litigants who tried to do their best and sometimes came up short.
She also was quite self-effacing. She used to tell the story about the occasion of her elevation to the federal bench: after receiving some very flattering publicity, a young neighbor girl approached her on the sidewalk and said, “Ms. Judge Battani, Ms. Judge Battani, we are so proud of you. Tell me, what’s your TV channel??” So much for the majesty of the federal courts.
Marianne loved being a federal judge; not so much the title or status, but for the opportunity to serve our community and each other in this position. She considered it a gift and a great responsibility in equal measures. She was a dedicated public servant, who has always striven to do justice, which, as Justinian wrote, is the constant and perpetual wish to render every person their due.
She admired her colleagues, and that respect and admiration was mutual. And she cherished her judicial staff, her long-time assistant Collete Motowski, her career clerk Molly Rohrig, and the term law clerks, case managers and court reporters who worked with her over the 20 years in federal court.
Marianne’s sense of justice was shaped by her own experience in her family. She was blessed with three loving sisters and a very determined and outspoken mother. Marianne bucked the cultural norms in her family and American society generally when she told her father in 1962 she was going to college (in the face of his protests), and then later to law school. Her first professional law job was contingent on her boss satisfying himself that his clients would not be upset by having a woman represent them as a lawyer.
But Marianne also was blessed with a remarkable cadre of professional and personal friends — strong, intelligent women in the law and life: Pam Harwood, Carol Chiamp, Helene White, Kathleen McDonald, Beverly Clark, Kitty Barnhart. In many ways, these professionals — Marianne included — helped change the culture and became role models for other women — and men. And those values live on in her dear Amanda, and, I am sure, in Sophia.
That personal experience informed her concept of justice, but it did not distort it. Marianne’s sense of right and wrong was uncanny, and as a judge she consistently sought and found practical and sensible solutions to the problems people brought to her. Her approach to judging was straightforward: figure out what happened, determine the rules that apply, and make a decision based on that. Sometimes the process, though, is not so simple, and her technique at times was more nuanced, but it was never emotional or partisan.
Her unflappability was on full display when we were going through the appointment process together. As many of you may know, to become a federal judge, one must be appointed by the President of the United States. But that appointment also must be confirmed by a vote of the Senate. We were nominated in 1999, but we were having difficulty getting a Senate hearing because of objections from a senator from Michigan, from a different political party than the President, who had a beef with the White House.
1999 turned to 2000. We were approaching the end of the last year of the president’s second term. As that great philosopher Yogi Berra once said of the sun conditions in left field, “It gets late early out there.”
It was a time of high anxiety for us. But Marianne handled it with wisdom and grace and logic. You know, her undergraduate degree is in mathematics. After college, and in fact while in law school, Marianne worked for IBM as a systems engineer. And that’s how she approached the situation. The pessimist says that glass is half empty and the optimist says it is half full. Well, the engineer says the glass is simply twice as big as it needs to be.
Her steady hand brought sense to the whole experience. And that’s how she decided cases: systematically, like an engineer. But her approach was never sterile or antiseptic. Instead, it was enriched by her own humanity and compassion, which transcended the opinions that she wrote and the cases she decided. And she knew, as Jose Garcia Oliver has said, that justice is so subtle a thing, to interpret it one has only need of a heart. She reflected what the prophet Jeremiah heard God tell him about Israel: “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33).
We know that Marianne had a great appreciation for personal responsibility and individual obligation. Once, when a criminal defendant she was sentencing in a public corruption case asked if he could get back the Rolex watch that the government had forfeited as part of his ill-gotten gains, she told him he probably would not need it because there would be plenty of clocks where he was going to pass the time.
That comment, as apt as it was, spoke volumes about her understanding of public service. She knew that leadership is not assuming power to do favors for one’s friends, but rather it is to touch the conscience of a community, and act in the spirit of the common good. She believed that true leadership embraces decency, public spiritedness, and the understanding that government is a necessary force for good, and that the role of the judiciary is to carry that forth.
I remember in June 2013, when Marianne’s judicial portrait was presented to our court, we all commented that the portrait, a work of art, was a fitting tribute to a thoughtful, elegant public servant who loved the work she did and the hard decisions she had been asked to make. It is a synthesis that calls to mind the quote from Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who wrote:
“Three great mysteries there are in the lives of mortal beings: the mystery of birth at its beginning; the mystery of death at its end; and greater than either, the mystery of love. Everything that is most precious in life is a form of love. Art is a form of love, if it be noble; labor is a form of love, if it be worthy; thought is a form of love, if it be inspired.”
We on our bench are privileged to have had a colleague of the caliber of Marianne Battani, a woman who was noble, worthy, and inspired — a fair and just judge.
Marianne fought valiantly against the cancer that ultimately claimed her earthly life. And watching last week her lying in bed, taking her labored breaths, the words from the poem “Infirmity” by Theodore Roethke came to mind:
Things without hands take hands: there is no choice,
Eternity’s not easily come by.
When opposites come suddenly in place,
I teach my eyes to hear, my ears to see
How body from spirit slowly does unwind
Until we are pure spirit at the end.
It is Marianne’s “pure spirit” that she has left us. Let us honor it, and thank God for her time with us.
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