A state appeals panel has taken the boot off a class action that accused the city of Chicago of using an administrative process to skirt a state law limiting penalties for individual ordinance violations to $250.
The original complaint dates to July 2018 when attorneys from the firm of Myron M. Cherry & Associates filed a complaint on behalf of named plaintiff Mike Blaha, and potentially hundreds of thousands of others, demanding the city be made to pay back people who, they say, routinely face “hundreds of dollars in fines and penalties … all of which are funneled into the city’s own system of administrative adjudication where the typical rules of evidence and civil procedure are disregarded.”
Jacie C. Zolna
| cherry-law.com
In arguing for dismissal, the city claimed a reference to a $250 limit in the Illinois Vehicle Code was a "drafting error," contending the larger context showed the General Assembly intended to allow municipalities to impose fines of up to $500 per violation.
Cook County Judge Anna Loftus ultimately agreed, and plaintiffs challenged the May 2021 dismissal before the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
Justice Mary Mikva wrote the panel’s opinion, issued May 6; Justices Daniel Pierce and Sharon Oden Johnson concurred.
According to the panel, the 1987 Vehicle Code allows counties and municipalities to establish administrative adjudication systems regarding certain parking offenses and moving violations. The Chicago City Council did so in 1990, ending a system of treating such infractions as criminal issues referred to the justice system.
All named plaintiffs got tickets for failing to display a city vehicle sticker, which carries a $200 fine. Blaha also collected three tickets for parking too close to a fire hydrant, a $150 infraction. Under Chicago Municipal Code, late fees are equivalent to the initial fine, although in September 2019 the city lowered the late fee for sticker violations to $50.
“The dispute in this case centers on two specific subsections within” the Vehicle Code, Mikva wrote. “The city’s central focus on appeal is that there is a clear and irreconcilable conflict” between a section limiting the total fine and penalty for any one infraction to $250 and a different section that limits administrative systems to $500 in fines.
The panel said Judge Loftus considered the Vehicle Code’s “complicated legislative history,” adding lawmakers amended the challenged section 25 times since its initial passage. Mikva wrote Loftus erred through a “willingness to find that the strong presumption that the legislature acted rationally and with full knowledge of previous enactments,” and explained the plaintiffs offered a reasonable, harmonized reading of the two subsections.
The reason one of the subsections contains a $500 cap, the panel explained, is because it was intended to apply to fines for certain offenses as codified in state law, some of which expressly allow $500 per violation. But the subsection dictating the $250 limit is for all fines enacted by city or county ordinance, such as sticker violations.
“It is certainly plausible that the legislature chose to impose a stricter and lower cap of $250 for fines and penalties that the cities and counties set through ordinances than it did for fines and penalties imposed by statute, which the legislature can control directly,” Mikva wrote. “Although we rest our interpretation of this statute on its plain language and our resistance to any assumption that there has been a legislative error, we note that the history of the $500 cap … also supports this understanding.”
A 2010 Vehicle Code amendment allowed administrative judges to hear violations involving automated railroad crossing enforcement systems. That amendment introduced the $500 cap, Mikva wrote, “presumably to accommodate the higher fines now permitted by the new railroad crossing statute.” At the same time, the $250 cap for ordinance violations was unchanged.
The panel rejected the city’s argument such a distinction is illusory, saying there is a clear difference between processing fines for violations of its own rules or collecting for state law infractions. It also said the city’s home rule authority to enact its own vehicle rules doesn’t supersede the Vehicle Code’s express limitations on how municipalities may administratively adjudicate violations of such rules.
The complaint heads back to circuit court for further proceedings, including attempts to create a class of anyone who was assessed a vehicle violation exceeding $250, and a subclass of anyone who paid the city for such a violation. Blaha estimates each class would include “many hundreds of thousands of members.”
In addition to class certification and a jury trial, Blaha wants the court to declare the city’s fines unconstitutional, to prevent the city from issuing or adjudicating such violations and award class members restitution with interest. The complaint also brings a claim of unjust enrichment for potential subclass members.
Blaha is represented by attorneys Jacie C. Zolna, Myron M. Cherry, Benjamin R. Swetland and Jessica C. Chavez, of Myron M. Cherry & Associates, of Chicago.
The city has been represented by attorneys from its Department of Law.