Good Humor Corp. v. Village of Mundelein

211 N.E.2d 269, 33 Ill. 2d 252, 14 A.L.R. 3d 887, 1965 Ill. LEXIS 237
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 28, 1965
Docket39026
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 211 N.E.2d 269 (Good Humor Corp. v. Village of Mundelein) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Good Humor Corp. v. Village of Mundelein, 211 N.E.2d 269, 33 Ill. 2d 252, 14 A.L.R. 3d 887, 1965 Ill. LEXIS 237 (Ill. 1965).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Schaefer

delivered the opinion of the court:

Good Humor, Inc. instituted this action against the Village of Mundelein and certain of its officials to enjoin the enforcement of an ordinance of the village. Andrew N. Korn and Katherine Korn, doing business as Kay’s Mobile Freezerettes, were allowed to intervene as parties plaintiff. Judgment on the pleadings was entered in favor of the defendants, and Good Humor, Inc., hereafter plaintiff, has appealed. The case involves questions arising under the constitutions of the United States and of this State.

As originally adopted, the ordinance prohibited the peddling of food, ice cream and other similar products by vendors upon the streets and sidewalks of the village. After the complaint in this case was filed the ordinance was amended to prohibit all peddling, which was defined as follows: “Peddle shall mean the selling, bartering or exchanging or the offering for sale, barter or exchange of any tangible personal property upon or along the streets, highways or public places of the Village or from house to house, whether at one place thereon or from place to place, from any wagon, truck, pushcart or other vehicle or from movable receptacles of any kind, but shall not include the delivery of any item previously ordered or the sale of items along delivery routes where the purchaser has previously requested the seller to stop and exhibit his items. Nor shall peddle be taken to include the solicitation of orders by sample where the goods are not delivered at the time the order is taken.”

The complaint was thereafter amended to challenge the ordinance as amended. The answer of the defendants denied certain of the allegations of the complaint and asserted a lack of sufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of other allegations. But both parties moved for judgment on the pleadings, and the trial court decided the case upon the assumption that the truth of the factual allegations of the complaint was conceded. In this court both parties have apparently acquiesced in that assumption, and we shall consider the case upon that basis.

The complaint alleged that the plaintiff has been engaged in selling at retail “Good Humor” ice-cream bars and other ice-cream products, for more than 25 years, particularly in the city of Chicago and its suburbs. For the past 15 years it has engaged in business in the Village of Mundelein. In Illinois the plaintiff “sells its products in and along streets, highways and other public thoroughfares from a fleet of specially designed, sanitary, refrigerated, automotive trucks owned by it and which are of uniform type and equipment in charge of a single employe.” The plaintiff’s products are manufactured under rigid sanitary standards, and packed and distributed in individual paper wrappers or sealed containers. The complaint also alleged that the value of the plaintiff’s business “is dependent upon its right to vend or peddle its merchandise from its trucks along and upon the streets, highways, and public thoroughfares of the various cities, villages and other municipalities within the State of Illinois, including the Village of Mundelein.” It asserted the invalidity of the ordinance, and prayed for an injunction restraining the defendants from enforcing it against the plaintiff or its employees.

The plaintiff does not contend that the selective exclusions of the ordinance make it discriminatory, and hence invalid. Its attack is based upon two propositions, first, that the General Assembly has not authorized the village to enact the ordinance, and second, that the ordinance deprives the plaintiff of its property without due process of law. In considering these issues we are not, of course, concerned with the wisdom or desirability of the ordinance.

We consider first the authority of the village to enact the ordinance. The General Assembly has granted municipalities the following relevant powers: “The corporate authorities of each municipality may regulate the use of the streets and other municipal property. * * * The corporate authorities of each municipality may prevent and regulate all amusements and activities having a tendency to annoy or endanger persons or property on the sidewalks, streets, and other municipal property. * * * The corporate authorities of each municipality may regulate traffc and sales upon the streets, sidewalks, public places, and municipal property. * * * The corporate authorities of each municipality may license, tax, regulate, or prohibit hawkers, peddlers, pawnbrokers, itinerant merchants, transient vendors of merchandise, theatricals and other exhibitions, shows, and amusements and may license, tax, and regulate all places for eating or amusement.” Ill. Rev. Stat. 1963, chap. 24, pars. 11 — 80—2, 11 — 80—9, 11 — 80—20, 11 — 42—5.

It is the plaintiff’s position that “[t]he authority of the Village of Mundelein under the provisions of the Municipal Code to regulate the use of its streets and public ways does not empower the Village to enact an ordinance which completely prohibits plaintiff from using the Village streets in pursuit of its business.” To support this position the plaintiff relies upon Haggenjos v. City of Chicago, 336 Ill. 573, and City of Chicago v. McKinley, 344 Ill. 297. In the Haggenjos case an ordinance which made it illegal to allow vehicles to stand at any time or for any length of time in certain downtown Chicago streets, was held invalid on the ground that it did not permit a reasonable time for unloading passengers and freight. In the McKinley case an ordinance which allowed a reasonable time fo.r unloading, not to exceed 3 minutes for passengers and 30 minutes for freight, was sustained although, as the court pointed out, the ordinance amounted “to total prohibition of the use of the street for the parking or storage of vehicles.” (344 Ill. at 302.) These cases stand for the proposition that the public streets exist to facilitate transportation and that activities essential to that end must be permitted. But that proposition does not aid the plaintiff. The present ordinance, which prohibits the use of the streets for sales, does not interfere with any essential incidents of transportation.

The authorities principally relied upon by the plaintiff thus fail to support its narrow reading of the power granted by the legislature. Moreover, that narrow reading, insofar as municipal power to regulate sales upon the public streets is concerned, has been rejected by this court. The situation was thus described in the notes of the 1941 Legislative Commission to Revise the Cities and Villages Act:

“The court in People ex rel. Goldberg v. Busse, 240 Ill. 338, 88 N.E. 831, declared that ‘the power to regulate is not the power to prohibit,’ but in City of Chicago v. Rhine (1936) 363 Ill. 619, 2 N.E.2d 905, 105 A.L.R. 1045, the court takes a different attitude. In this latter case a Chicago ordinance prohibiting sales of any articles except newspapers upon the streets within a certain downtown area was held valid. The court stated, after citing sections 9, 10, 14, 20, 41, and 102 of article 5 of the Cities and Villages act:

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Bluebook (online)
211 N.E.2d 269, 33 Ill. 2d 252, 14 A.L.R. 3d 887, 1965 Ill. LEXIS 237, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/good-humor-corp-v-village-of-mundelein-ill-1965.