Hagee v. City of Evanston

Citation530 F. Supp. 585
Decision Date18 January 1982
Docket NumberNo. 81 C 4046.,81 C 4046.
PartiesJoseph HAGEE, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF EVANSTON, Defendant.
CourtU.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

John Bernard Cashion, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Jack M. Siegel, Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

GETZENDANNER, District Judge.

Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1976), plaintiffs Joseph Hagee, Reed Mitchell Hagee and Raymond Jump seek to hold the City of Evanston, Illinois liable for the allegedly arbitrary behavior of its employees. Evanston has moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim. This motion is granted.

Count I

The following facts underlie Count I.1 Plaintiffs contracted to purchase property in Evanston on May 18, 1978. The purchase was contingent upon Evanston's issuing a building permit authorizing the construction of 15 townhouses on the land. The necessary permit was obtained on September 8, 1978, and construction commenced soon thereafter. On December 28, 1978, an Evanston official made known certain objections concerning plaintiffs' "Central Place" project. Plaintiffs complied with the official's demands and submitted new plans which were approved in February of 1979. Later that month a second meeting was held in which City officials again demanded changes. Once again, plaintiffs complied.

On April 19, 1979, Evanston Alderman John Allen filed an appeal with the Evanston Zoning Board of Appeals ("Board"). Allen alleged that Central Place's construction violated Evanston's zoning ordinance and that plaintiffs' building permit should accordingly be revoked. Following a hearing, the Board voted on July 17, 1979 to revoke. Work at the job site ceased.

Plaintiffs next sought an order from the Circuit Court of Cook County enjoining the Board's revocation. On October 17, 1979, the court granted plaintiffs' request in part, holding that Evanston was estopped from revoking the permit. In reaching this determination, the court noted that plaintiffs had incurred nearly a million dollars in expenses while relying upon Evanston's assurances that their plans, as modified, were acceptable. The court conditioned its injunction, however, upon plaintiffs' compliance with numerous conditions, the most significant of which being that plaintiffs record a covenant restricting Central Place's entire ground floor to purely business and professional uses.

The City of Evanston appealed and argued that the Circuit Court had improperly relied upon the estoppel doctrine. Unpersuaded, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the lower court's decision on December 8, 1980. Hagee v. City of Evanston, 91 Ill.App.3d 729, 47 Ill.Dec. 68, 414 N.E.2d 1184 (1st Dist.1980).

Suit in this court commenced more than a year and a half later in July of 1981. (Central Place has since been completed.) Plaintiffs argue that the Zoning Board "arbitrarily" revoked their permit and thus deprived them of property without due process of law. Such illegal act, it is further claimed, caused extensive consequential harm in the form of "attorneys fees, increased financing expenses, forced renegotiation of subcontracts, preservation expenses during shutdown and increased costs in materials." Complaint, ¶ 13. In dollar figures, the damage prayer totals $515,000. Attorneys fees for the present matter are also sought. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (1976).

One cannot seriously dispute that in revoking plaintiffs' permit, the Board acted under color of state law and thereby worked a temporary deprivation of a valuable property right (plaintiffs' permit). "Standing alone, however, these facts do not establish a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nothing in that amendment protects against all deprivations of life, liberty or property by the State. The Fourteenth Amendment protects only against deprivations `without due process of law.'" Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 537, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 1913, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981). The motion to dismiss can accordingly be denied only if plaintiffs' allegations sufficiently describe Board conduct which was so unfair that it fell below the norm required by the principle of "due process."

Plaintiffs do not contend that they were subjected to any procedural unfairness in connection with their hearing before the Board. Their constitutional argument is instead grounded solely in the fact that the Board's decision was later reversed by the state courts: "The revocation of the building permit by the City of Evanston must be deemed arbitrary in that the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that the City of Evanston, as a matter of law, was estopped from revoking the permit." Complaint, ¶ 10 (emphasis added). In reaching its contrary decision, the Board, plaintiffs contend, "chose to ignore one of the most basic rules in the law affecting building and zoning regulations: that of estoppel." Plaintiffs' Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss at 8. The Board's decision was thus so substantively in error that its very issuance contravened the Constitution.

Evanston responds that at the time of the Board's hearing, plaintiffs had at most a state law right to proceed with their construction. Only the Illinois doctrine of estoppel frustrated the Board's ultimate decision. Because of this, the complaint reduces in defendant's eyes merely to a charge that a municipal administrative body misapplied state law. Therefore, no federal claim is present.

Defendant's analysis is correct. In that Count 1 relies solely upon alleged State law errors, it is plainly insufficient as a matter of law:

We cannot treat a mere error of State law, if one occurred, as a denial of due process; otherwise, every erroneous decision by a State court on State law would come here as a federal constitutional question.

Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 731, 68 S.Ct. 1256, 1257, 92 L.Ed. 1683 (1948); accord, Garner v. State of Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 187 n.2, 82 S.Ct. 248, 264 n.2, 7 L.Ed.2d 207 (1961) (Harlan, J., concurring in the judgment).2

No case cited by plaintiffs establishes any contrary rule. In Sixth Camden Corp. v. Evesham Tp., Burlington Cty., 420 F.Supp. 709 (D.N.J.1976), the most analogous precedent, a plaintiff sought relief on damage claims growing out of a zoning board's allegedly "arbitrary" refusal to grant a variance. As in the present case, the challenged administrative decision was overturned by a state court on state law grounds prior to the institution of the federal suit. Rejecting a motion to dismiss, the district court held that plaintiff's allegations of "arbitrariness" stated a claim for damages. Despite the surface similarity, the arguments pressed here differ markedly from those made in Sixth Camden. There, plaintiffs' assertions of "arbitrariness" rested upon their charge that the zoning board's decision had failed to further in any way "the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare." Id. at 722 (citing Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 387, 47 S.Ct. 114, 118, 71 L.Ed. 303 (1926)). In essence, they challenged the zoning board's attempt to comply with federally mandated substantive requirements.3See also Sternaman v. County of McHenry, 454 F.Supp. 240 (N.D.Ill.1978). Here, by contrast, plaintiffs do not assert that the Board erred in any way while applying substantive federal zoning norms.4 As noted before, they complain instead only of the Board's failure to deal properly with the state law criterion of estoppel. These are not disputes the federal courts were designed to handle.5

Count II

In Count II plaintiffs complain of activities occurring after the issuance of the Circuit Court's order of October 17, 1979. Specifically, they charge that work...

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3 cases
  • Hagee v. City of Evanston
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
    • March 9, 1984
    ...first dismissed the appellants' complaint for failure to state a cause of action for relief under section 1983. Hagee v. City of Evanston, 530 F.Supp. 585 (N.D.Ill.1982). It then permitted the appellants to amend their complaint, Hagee v. City of Evanston, 95 F.R.D. 344 (N.D.Ill.1982), and ......
  • Wozniak v. County of Du Page
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
    • August 31, 1983
    ...the subject property to be in a flood plain, this Court would be compelled to grant defendants' motion to dismiss. Hagee v. City of Evanston, 530 F.Supp. 585 (N.D.Ill.1982). This would be the case even though plaintiffs could show that the zoning decision had been reversed by a state court,......
  • Law v. Witczak
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Maryland
    • September 2, 2014
    ...Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 146-47 (1979); Jackson v. City of Joliet, 715 F.2d 1200, 1205 (7th Cir. 1983); Hagee v. City of Evanston, 530 F. Supp. 585, 587 (N.D. Ill. 1982); Robinson v. Leary, 401 F. Supp. 1027, 1030-31 (N.D. Ill. 1975). It is certain that a violation of a duty under a......

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