Fighting
City Hall
by Bruce Blau
That had to be the attitude of Dan Cassidy, owner of Sundance Irrigation, in Illinois landscape company that recently lost a case brought against it in the Illinois Supreme Court. The decision was the latest and hardest blow in a long, frustrating battle with the state. Especially when the crime committed by Sundance Irrigation was inadvertently impersonating a plumber.
Cassidy's company was nailed by the state in 1994 for violating a law that made it a misdemeanor for anyone but a licensed plumber to install a plumbing system. However, what they were installing was actually a lawn sprinkling system. Confused?
To understand the situation, it's best to step back to 1983, when an amendment was attached to a sewer bill in the Illinois state legislature. The amendment stated that lawn sprinkling systems should be part of a plumbing system. All plumbing systems are supposed to be installed by licensed plumbers. Of course, it followed that a lawn sprinkling system also had to be installed by a licensed plumber.
Mike Clark is on the board of the Illinois Turf Irrigation Association and has been assisting Cassidy with the case from the beginning. He explains that when the law was first drawn up, it was applied inconsistently. "From 1983 until now . . . it's been taken in a wide variety of degrees, from [one community saying] 'I could care less' to another community saying, 'We're going to take it to the letter of the law.'"
Clark is the irrigation branch manager and landscape construction manager for the Brickman Group, one of the largest landscape service contractors in the U.S.
Cassidy arranged for backflow prevention devices to be installed by licensed plumber.
The situation got stickier in 1994. The state passed a "backflow prevention law," making it punishable not to install a reduced pressure backflow preventer in any irrigation system.
When this law was introduced as a punishable offense, however, awareness was suddenly heightened and several communities began following the state plumbing law much more closely. Even though the violation was a misdemeanor charge, the transgressing company would be punished with a fine.
Later in 1994, Cassidy's Sundance Irrigation was working in the town of Aurora (located southwest of Chicago). Conscious of the state law, Cassidy arranged for the backflow preventer to be installed by a licensed plumber. Sundance even secured the permit through this plumber.
As he would normally do, he installed the sprinkler system itself, consisting of piping and sprinkler heads, with his regular irrigation crews. These workers were experienced, trained by Cassidy, himself. However, they were common laborers, not plumbers.
Clark said that when the first shot was fired, the town of Aurora stopped his job. They cited him for not following the law: for not installing the sprinkler products with licensed plumbers. Cassidy prevailed in this instance. He fought the citation and won his case, at the town court level.
The state of Illinois heard of the case, however, and contested the decision. Cassidy found himself in a circuit court for Cain County, fighting the state on the same issue. Clark is not certain what possessed the state to get involved. "There is all kinds of speculation as to why the state did this," he says, "but no confirmed reason."
It took almost a year for the case to be heard in this circuit court. At the end, Sundance Irrigation was victorious, yet again. But Illinois was not ready to give up.
The next day, the state filed an appeal to the State Supreme Court (circa March 1997). The court heard appeals from both sides over the course of the next year. This fall, the Supreme Court handed down their decision. The judges deemed that the legislative body for the state wrote this law and felt that it was necessary. For that reason, the court would uphold it and decide in favor of the state.
Unfortunately for Cassidy,
there are no more courts to appeal to, even if he were
to want to. The case is a state issue and cannot go into
a federal court. Sundance is taking its last legal recourse,
filing an appeal to the State Supreme Court to review its
own decision. "If the State Supreme Court reviews
the appeal and decides that what they did was the right thing,
from a legal court system, that's the end of the line,"
says Clark.
The total bill for the case, according to Clark, has exceeded
$50,000, much of it from Cassidy's pocket.
In the meantime, the case has created an extremely heightened awareness of the issue. Communities throughout Illinois are following the law to the letter, by giving citations to contractors. To make matters worse, there was a new amendment, piggybacked on another legislative issue in 1998 that made it a punishable offense to install a plumbing system without a plumbing license. The penalty for this offense is $5,000.
Clark does not feel that the
legislature meant to target the new law at irrigation contractors.
"More likely, it was so that people doing domestic-type
plumbing without a license would be punished," he
says.
The Irrigation Association is now focusing its efforts on getting
the law itself changed. "What the court did say," says
Clark, "was that we should go to the legislature and have
the legislature rewrite the law."
Clark and Cassidy have been talking with various associations, drumming up support. "The Landscape Contractors Association, Nurserymen's Association, Golf Course Superintendents Association, and any other people involved in irrigating plant material are working on writing a bill and then deciding how to divide up the politics of it."