The city of Chicago won’t be able to pull to the curb a class action lawsuit demanding City Hall pay up to drivers who were hit with red light camera tickets before 2010, because the city didn’t abide by its own rules in the way it served up notices to those who got the tickets.
On June 12, Cook County Circuit Judge David B. Atkins rejected the city’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit brought by attorneys representing potentially hundreds of thousands of people who may have received red light camera tickets from 2003-2010, and were excluded from an earlier settlement the city reached to resolve a different lawsuit over similar claims.
The city had argued the new lawsuit was barred by time limits set in place by Illinois law.
Judge Atkins, however, ruled to the contrary, as it was “undisputed” that the city failed to send the notices required by its own ordinance before demanding payment from people who received red light camera tickets.
“Therefore, where the facts, as alleged, show that (the city of Chicago’s) decisions may be found to be void, Plaintiffs are free to attack the decision at any time,” Atkins wrote.
The lawsuit was filed in January 2019, less than a year after City Hall had inked a settlement to end a prior class action lawsuit over legally defective red-light and speeding camera tickets sent from 2010-2015.
The new lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by the firm of Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP, of Chicago and Pennsylvania, on behalf of named plaintiffs Fred Hampton and Glenn Williams, and a potential class of hundreds of thousands of additional plaintiffs.
The lawsuit was patterned after the earlier class action brought by attorneys with the firm of Myron F. Cherry & Associates, of Chicago, in 2015.
In both lawsuits, the plaintiffs accused the city of violating its ordinance, governing the process by which red light camera tickets are administered. Specifically, the lawsuits accused the city of failing to send a second notice of violation to people who were mailed tickets under the city’s automated traffic enforcement program. The notices were to be mailed to give those receiving tickets sufficient chance to contest them before the city began assessing additional fees and fines for the unpaid tickets.
Failure to issue the second notice should render any of those tickets “null and void,” the plaintiffs represented Cafferty claimed in the new lawsuit.
“The City’s misconduct likely coerced thousands of Class members to pay a fine they were not yet required to pay,” the new lawsuit said.
To end the 2015 lawsuit, the city ultimately agreed to pay the plaintiffs $38 million, including $11 million in fees to the Cherry & Associates lawyers. Class members got an average of $58 each from the city as compensation for the $100 tickets they allegedly wrongly had been made to pay.
However, that settlement only covered those who received tickets from 2010-2015. The new lawsuit said those who received tickets from 2003-2010 should not be barred by that settlement from pressing claims of their own.
In response, the city filed motions to dismiss, asserting the lawsuit was filed too late, outside the time limits set by state law. The city also argued the plaintiffs also failed to exhaust their administrative review options, and had paid the fines anyway.
Judge Atkins rejected all of those arguments.
He noted in a separate case on the same basic question concerning the need for the second notice of violation, another Cook County judge had ruled the word “shall” in the city’s ordinance, required the city to send the second notice before collecting the fines. When the city did not send the second notice, it rendered void the ultimate decision requiring payment of the fine.
“The law is clear that if an agency decision is found to be void, there is no statute of limitations prohibiting a person from attacking that decision,” Atkins wrote.
Further, Atkins said the plaintiffs did not need to exhaust “available administrative remedies prior to bringing” their lawsuit, if the judge ultimately finds the failure to send the second notice of violation voids the payment demands altogether.
And finally, he rejected the city’s invocation of the so-called “voluntary payment doctrine.” The judge declined to hold against the plaintiffs that they had already paid the tickets, which he said under Illinois law, are seen as having been paid under threats of further action from the city.
“Contrary to Defendant’s (the city’s) analysis, Illinois law does not stand for the proposition that ‘threats of debt collection, court proceedings, or revocation of licenses if a motorist does not pay their fines are simply not the sort of duress that constitute an exception to the voluntary payment doctrine,’” Judge Atkins wrote.
The city is represented in the action by attorneys with the firm of Thompson Coburn LLP, of Chicago.