Paul Noland, a former judge and attorney who represented Tylenol amid 1982 cyanide poisonings, dies at 91

Paul Noland was a DuPage County judge who in his earlier career as an attorney represented the makers of Tylenol in the aftermath of the still-unsolved Chicago-area poisoning deaths in 1982 that were caused by drug tampering.

Noland became involved representing the makers of Tylenol because Dave Collins, the chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Products unit in 1982, had been close friends with Noland dating back to their high school days and also had been Noland’s college roommate.

“He had a very positive attitude on life, and a balanced view of life,” Collins said.

Noland, 91, died of complications from cancer Sept. 16 at his Glen Ellyn home, said Peggy Noland, his wife of 67 years. He had been a Glen Ellyn resident since 1965.

Born in Chicago, Noland grew up in Oak Park and graduated from Fenwick High School in Oak Park in 1952. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1956.

After college, Noland served as a junior-grade lieutenant in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii and working as a navigator on flights protecting the United States, his family said. He returned to the Chicago area and worked as an insurance adjuster while attending DePaul University College of Law in the evenings.

After graduating from law school in 1963, Noland took a job with the Chicago law firm that later was known as Rooks, Pitts and Poust. A trial attorney, Noland represented a variety of clients, including doctors, nurses, U.S. Steel Corp. and the locally based Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway, which now is part of the Canadian National Railway.

Noland joined forces with a colleague, Francis “Mike” Heroux, to start their own Wheaton-based law firm, Heroux and Noland, in the 1970s. The firm eventually merged into Rooks, Pitts and Poust, effectively bringing Noland back to where he started, his wife said.

Noland was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers in 1986.

When the Tylenol poisonings began in 1982, Collins approached Noland, looking for legal assistance, given Noland’s connections to Chicago-area law enforcement and his understanding of how the city worked. Noland served as the local legal presence for Tylenol’s manufacturer during that period, and he also worked behind the scenes to try to prevent an outright ban on Tylenol, as had been proposed at that time by Chicago’s then-Mayor Jane Byrne.

Noland and Heroux also worked to form a relationship with the multiagency task force investigating the poisonings. Ultimately, Tylenol rebounded from the murders, regaining its market share prior to the crisis.

In 1988, Noland left his law firm to join Franklin Park-based Duo-Fast Corp. as executive vice president and general counsel. After leaving Duo-Fast in 1992, Noland threw his hat in the ring to become a DuPage County associate judge. After being selected, he began working in the domestic relations division, and he later served in other divisions as well.

“Paul served in almost every division in the courthouse, and he came in as a very accomplished trial attorney, and … he quickly became very well respected by the people who appeared in front of him, as well as his fellow judges,” said former Illinois state Supreme Court Justice Michael Burke, who is also a former DuPage judge. “And as good of a judge as he was, Paul was a better person. He was very outgoing, and he was a really great friend to many of us.”

One of Noland’s favorite roles as a judge was presiding over weddings, his wife said. He did so on civil ceremony days at DuPage’s courthouse, and he even presided over the weddings of several of his grandchildren, she said.

Noland retired as a full-time judge in 1998, but on four occasions, he returned to the courthouse to fill in for DuPage judges who were unable to work, his wife said. In 2010, he presided over a medical malpractice trial that resulted in an $11.5 million award given to a mother for the death of her unborn child — the largest medical malpractice verdict on record in DuPage County.

Outside of work, Noland enjoyed doing crossword puzzles, singing, playing volleyball, golfing, following Notre Dame Fighting Irish football and storytelling, his wife said. He had been a member of the Glen Oak Country Club in Glen Ellyn for more than three decades. He also served on the board of Rosary College and as a member of the Glen Ellyn Jaycees and on the Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital corporate development committee.

Noland excelled at tennis, and played on the Glen Ellyn Park District’s clay courts several times a week well into his 80s, his wife said.

Noland also frequently got together with a group of 20 or so Fenwick graduates from the class of 1952.

In addition to his wife, Noland is survived by three sons, Michael, Bartholomew and Daniel; two daughters, Molly Mattaliano and Jaime Manion; 16 grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and a sister, Cathy Fox.

Goldsborough is a freelance writer.