A state appeals panel has revived much of a lawsuit accusing the city of Chicago of violating the rights of people who sought to challenge distracted driving tickets by exclusively directing such complainants through an administrative review process.
In August 2017, shortly after reaching a $39 million settlement to end a class action over red-light camera tickets, Myron Cherry & Associates attorneys Myron M. Cherry, Jacie Zolna, Benjamin Swetland and Jessica Chavin filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of several named plaintiffs ticketed between 2012 and 2014.
That complaint said the city, rather than giving ticketed motorists the chance to defend themselves in Cook County Circuit Court, funneled those cited through an administrative hearings system, allegedly depriving the accused of their rights under the law and allowing City Hall to collect significantly more money through the process. The plaintiffs didn’t challenge the validity of their citations.
Jacie C. Zolna
| cherry-law.com
After Cook County Judge Pamela Meyerson granted summary judgment to the city in August 2021, the plaintiffs appealed to the First District Appellate Court, which issued its opinion Sept. 7. Justice Jesse Reyes wrote the opinion; Justices Bertina Lampkin and Mary Rochford concurred.
On appeal, the plaintiffs argued Judge Meyerson incorrectly determined they lacked standing to sue. Judge Meyerson ruled their only legal injury was the fines paid for violating the cell phone ordinance. She said that injury arose from their conduct and not from the city's municipal procedures.
On appeal, the plaintiffs said the city's Department of Administrative Hearings lacked the jurisdiction to adjudicate the vehicle code violations the city claimed each driver committed.
The appellate panel called summary judgment “a drastic measure” and explained its broad powers to affirm such a ruling in favor of the city even if Meyerson didn’t address a specific legal strategy. However, the panel explained, the city’s argument on appeal was that Meyerson was right to stop short of addressing whether cell phone tickets were properly handled in administrative hearings instead of circuit court.
“Acceptance of the city’s position would violate a bedrock principle of law: that a court — or an agency, as in this case — can act only where it has the jurisdiction to do so,” Reyes wrote. “For a court, this power is granted by our constitution; for an agency, it is granted by statute. Subject-matter jurisdiction is so important that it cannot be waived, and may be raised at any time. Indeed, courts have the affirmative obligation to consider subject-matter jurisdiction even where it is not raised by the parties. A lack of jurisdiction is fatal to a case — if jurisdiction is lacking, any subsequent judgment is rendered void and may be attacked collaterally.”
The plaintiffs insisted they incurred a legal injury when the administrative hearings department entered void judgments against them. The panel said Meyerson’s ruling effectively deprived them of their right to challenge those penalties, a finding Reyes described as “inconsistent with the fundamental importance of the issue.”
With that position clear, the panel turned to the city’s other arguments for affirming the summary judgment. Among those were that city and state law allowed administrative hearings for cell phone tickets with regard to citations issued 2012. The panel said that position holds water because the Illinois Vehicle Code, until an amendment that took effect Jan. 1, 2014, was “substantially — and intentionally — narrower than the city ordinance,” and affirmed summary judgment on those older tickets.
For the remaining tickets, the city argued summary judgment was appropriate because the plaintiffs ultimately paid the assessed fines. However, the appellate justices said, the plaintiffs argued those payments were not “voluntary” but made under duress of the city’s power, a dispute the panel said couldn’t be resolved through summary judgment.
The city also said the plaintiffs who admitted they violated the ordinance shouldn’t be allowed to pursue damages based on how it adjudicated their citations. The panel disagreed, saying a plaintiff’s request to have fines refunded doesn’t constitute an attempt to take advantage of their own infractions.
“Plaintiffs are not seeking to be rewarded for violating the law,” Reyes wrote. “Instead, they are seeking the return of money that they contend was unlawfully taken from them by an agency acting outside the scope of its authority.”
The city has been represented by Celia Meza, corporation counsel from the city’s law department, with Myriam Zreczny Kasper and Suzanne M. Loose, assistant corporation counsel; and J. David Duffy, Robert J. Wagner and Patrick Morales-Doyle, of Thompson Coburn LLP, special assistant corporation counsel.