A state appeals court has restarted a class action lawsuit accusing the city of Chicago of wrongly issuing tens of thousands of allegedly bogus, costlier Central Business District parking tickets to people who weren’t actually parked in Chicago’s Central Business District.
On March 31, a divided three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court ruled a Chicago man didn’t necessarily need to go through the city’s administrative hearing process before pressing his class action.
In the 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel’s majority said they agreed the city’s Department of Administrative Hearings, which typically handles parking ticket appeals, lacks the authority under state law to grant the plaintiffs the full results they are seeking from the lawsuit, including an order specifically forbidding the city from continuing its “routine practice” of slapping the enhanced CBD parking tickets on vehicles parked outside the boundaries of the CBD.
Thomas A. Zimmerman, Jr
| attorneyzim.com
The decision was authored by Justice Mary Mikva. Justice Sheldon Harris concurred in the judgment.
Justice Sharon Oden Johnson dissented.
The plaintiff “is asking for a court to determine if the City is engaged in the routine practice he alleges and, if so, for the court to condemn the practice, forbid it going forward, and redress the harm the practice has already caused,” Justice Mikva wrote.
“… The judicial determinations sought in this case fall outside of the scope of the Administrative Review Law. The exhaustion doctrine simply does not apply to claims that the City has a widespread policy or is engaged in the routine or systemic practice of issuing central business district metered parking tickets outside of the district’s established boundaries.”
The decision revives the class action lawsuit brought by plaintiff Alec Pinkston in 2019. He is represented in the case by attorneys Thomas A. Zimmerman Jr. and Matthew C. De Re, of the Zimmerman Law Offices, of Chicago.
It centers on news reports from CBS Chicago and ProPublica which allegedly revealed the city’s improper parking ticket practices from 2013-2018. The tickets required those receiving them to pay at least $65 for each violation, according to the complaint.
The special CBD tickets were issued under a city ordinance which enhances the fine for violating the city’s metered parking restrictions in the CBD, such as parking without paying the meter or remaining parked after the meter expires.
The CBD roughly includes the Loop and much of River North, bordered by Halsted Street on the west, Division Street on the north, Roosevelt Road on the south and Lake Michigan on the east.
The complaint said the analysis indicated “the City has a routine practice of issuing Central Business District Tickets to vehicles parked outside of the City’s Central Business District.”
“…As a result, Plaintiff (Pinkston) and members of the class were (and are) subject to fines in connection with violations … which they did not commit,” the complaint said.
Pinkston said he personally such a ticket in may 2019, when his vehicle was parked in the 1200 block of South Wabash Avenue, south of Roosevelt Road, which serves as the southern boundary for the CBD.
The lawsuit was dismissed by Cook County Judge Caroline Moreland.
In that ruling, Judge Moreland backed the city’s contention that Pinkston’s lawsuit should be barred because he did not stick with a challenge to the ticket he began through the city’s Department of Administrative Hearings.
Therefore, the judge determined, he did not exhaust the administrative hearing option available to him before filing suit in court, which the law otherwise says he must do when challenging parking tickets.
Pinkston appealed, saying that so-called exhaustion doctrine did not apply to his case.
Pinkston’s attorneys argued the case should be exempted because the improper CBD tickets were issued illegally, and should be considered void.
He further argued an appeal to the city’s administrative hearing officers would be pointless, because that department lacked the ability under the law to give him the full scope of relief he sought, including an injunction against the city forbidding them from issuing such tickets and potentially forcing the city to refund any fines paid by people who, like Pinkston, simply chose to pay the fine, rather than risk a long fight and more severe consequences down the road.
The appeals judges pulled most of Pinkston’s arguments to the curb.
For instance, they ruled the tickets were issued by the city under valid authority. So the tickets were “not ‘void,’ but merely voidable,” the majority ruled.
The justices also determined an appeal to the city’s DOAH would not have been necessarily “futile,” as Pinkston contended.
But the majority agreed with Pinkston that the city’s administrative hearings process offered Pinkston no opportunity to actually halt the alleged “routine practice” of issuing bogus CBD tickets.
The majority said they believed Pinkston should get the chance to attempt to prove his claims that the city engaged in a systemic, illegal pattern, and may owe a class of tens of thousands of others money.
“To be clear, if on remand the evidence fails to support a finding that the City is engaged in the ‘routine practice’ Mr. Pinkston has alleged, then the exhaustion doctrine will indeed apply to any attempts through this litigation to adjudicate parking tickets on an individualized basis or to review administrative decisions outside the strictures of the Administrative Review Law,” Justice Mikva wrote for the majority.
The majority also rejected the city’s attempt to argue the lawsuit should be tossed because Pinkston had “voluntarily paid” the fine.
Pinkston argued the payment was made under threats of further action against him, including late fees, interest, “immobilization of his vehicle” and possible suspension of his driver’s license, for failure to pay.
The justices said there were too many open questions remaining concerning just how “voluntary” Pinkston’s payment may have been to allow them to dismiss on those grounds at this point.
In dissent, Justice Oden Johnson said the majority erred in determining Pinkston should get another shot at pressing his claims.
Oden Johnson said the law does not give the courts the ability to even consider challenges to parking tickets until the administrative hearing process has been completed and exhausted.
To allow this case to proceed, she said, the courts must first know if the tickets were lawfully issued or not, a task she said should be assigned to the city’s Administrative Hearings Department.
“I disagree with the majority’s holding that plaintiff meets an exception to the exhaustion of remedies doctrine, namely that the DOAH could not provide him with the ultimate relief he sought,” Oden Johnson wrote. “Such relief is premised on the factual finding of whether such ticket for illegally parking within the Central Business District was proper, which is squarely within the authority of the DOAH and not the circuit court.
“Additionally, until such factual determination is made, I do not believe that we can reach the issue of whether the City’s alleged practice is systemic or not.”
The city has been represented by attorneys from its Department of Law.
The appellate panel reversed Judge Moreland’s judgment, and remanded the case to the Cook County courts for further proceedings.