From Cozzi v. Village of Melrose Park, decided yesterday by Judge Steven Seeger (N.D. Ill.):
The Village of Melrose Park decided that it would be a good idea to issue 62 tickets to an elderly couple for having lawn chairs in their front yard. The Village issued ticket after ticket, imposing fine after fine, to two eighty-year-old residents, Plaintiffs Vincent and Angeline Cozzi.
The fines were not small potatoes. Each ticket cost $500, so the Village tagged them with fines totaling about $30,000. And when it was all said and done, the Village slapped them with a lien on their house, for good measure.
The tickets faulted the Cozzis for creating a nuisance and for "unsanitary conditions." The tickets did not explain what was unsanitary about the plastic lawn chairs. But the Village claimed that they were receiving anonymous calls about "clutter" on their front lawn.
The Cozzis, for their part, didn't view their lawn furniture as wasteful clutter. In fact, they regularly used the furniture to sit outside, and visit with loved ones in a socially distanced manner during the pandemic. The fresh air and companionship apparently cost them $30,000.
A reader might be wondering how things could have gone so dramatically off the rails. The Village of Melrose Park, it seems, reacted poorly when Plaintiff Michael Cozzi (the adult son of Vincent and Angeline) complained about the first two tickets, and about the mistreatment of his parents more generally. Michael Cozzi attended public meetings in Melrose Park, and he expressed his concerns on social media about the Village harassing his elderly parents.
That free expression led to an avalanche of tickets. The Village issued the Cozzis a $500 ticket nearly every business day from December 3, 2020 to March 3, 2021. Christmas Eve was no exception. The tickets would financially cripple the Cozzis, an elderly couple on a fixed income.
