LaBella Winnetka, Inc. v. Village of Winnetka (N.D. Ill, 07 C 6633)
It’s no surprise that we expect the government to treat us fairly. Not to simplify the founders' intents; it was unequal treatment at the hands of another government that sparked the American Revolution. You might think the facts of the instant case are a far cry from the issues leading to the Boston Tea Party, the Civil War and Women’s Suffrage, but the notion of equality… our expectation of it… is pervasive.
In 2007, LaBella Restaurant sued the Village of Winnetka. Oddly, a picture of some form of construction at the site been preserved by Google:
The amended complaint alleged that:
LaBella had a problem with its roof leaking. From 2006 through 2007 the restaurant informed the village that the landlord of the building failed to maintain the roof and the village never required the landlord to bring the roof into compliance with the village ordinances. The restaurant alleged that the landlord hired roofers who then worked without work or building permits from the village and that a fire accidentally happened in 2007. The restaurant was forced to close by the damage.
In the aftermath the restaurant applied for permits to repair the fire damage to the restaurant’s interior and the village refused to issue permits until the landlord replaced the roof. The restaurant claimed in its complaint that while it was closed and the village was denying it permission to make repairs until and unless the roof was fixed, the village met with competing restaurants in the same building and that the village approved permits and designs for those competing restaurants to occupy portions of the building that LaBella leased from the landlord.
LaBella claimed that the denial of its permits and the selective enforcement of other building ordinances in the city (not citing a competing restaurant for having an exhaust fan that was non-compliant and allowing another restaurant to keep its cooking operations going even though a portion of its restaurant had been partitioned off for building renovations) amounted to unequal treatment by the village.
Now, you do have a right to bring suit when you are not being treated by the government as other similarly situated people are being treated… however, the in deciding the motion brought by the defendants to get rid of the case against them, the Court found that LaBella was in a different situation from the other restaurants.
The Court ruled that the fire damage implicated structural concerns for the building. The damage and contemplated repair was not the same as partitioning off a portion of a restaurant to make renovations nor was forcing it to close the same as not forcing a restaurant with a non-compliant exhaust fan to close. The Court dismissed the claim based on the unequal treatment at the hands of the village because LaBella had not sufficiently shown that the other restaurants were similarly situated.
LaBella’s may not be out though. The Federal Court refused to hear the counts of its complaint that weren’t based on alleged constitutional violations… it could still decide to litigate those in state court.
You shouldn’t be afraid to speak up and assert your rights when you think you’re not being treated fairly, but you need to know that sometimes a Court will decide that not all projects are the same.
