Illinois Official Reports 

Appellate Court

Bentley v. Hefti, 2015 IL App (4th) 140167

Appellate Court 

Caption

RANDY W. BENTLEY, d/b/a BENTLEY CONSTRUCTION, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CHARLES HEFTI and MARION HEFTI, 

Defendants-Appellants.

District & No. Fourth District

Docket No. 4-14-0167

Filed June 2, 2015

Decision Under 

Review

Appeal from the Circuit Court of Macoupin County, No. 12-LM-58;

the Hon. Patrick J. Londrigan, Judge, presiding.

Judgment Certified question answered; cause remanded.

Counsel on

Appeal

Martin Buckley (argued), of Buckley & Buckley LLC, of St. Louis, 

Missouri, for appellants.

Aaron E. Bellm (argued), of Kasten, Ruyle, Sims & Bellm, P.C., of 

Carlinville, for appellee.
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Panel JUSTICE STEIGMANN delivered the judgment of the court, with 

opinion.

Justices Knecht and Holder White concurred in the judgment and 

opinion.

 OPINION 

¶ 1 In May 2012, plaintiff, Randy W. Bentley, filed a three-count complaint against 

defendants, Charles and Marion Hefti, seeking money damages for allegedly uncompensated 

construction services plaintiff performed for defendants in 2010. On August 28, 2013, plaintiff 

filed a “Motion for Leave to Add Count[s] IV and V.” Attached to that motion was a document 

entitled “Supplement to the Complaint to Add Count[s] IV and V,” in which plaintiff alleged 

that almost a year earlier, on August 29, 2012, defendant Marion Hefti published defamatory 

statements against plaintiff. The trial court set the motion for a September 26, 2013, hearing, at 

which the court granted plaintiff leave to file the purported supplemental complaint instanter. 

Thereafter, in October 2013, Marion filed a motion to dismiss the purported supplemental 

complaint, arguing that it was time barred by the one-year statute of limitations for defamation, 

which had expired on August 29, 2013. See 735 ILCS 5/13-201 (West 2012). The court denied 

Marion’s motion to dismiss. 

¶ 2 In December 2013, Marion filed this interlocutory appeal pursuant to Illinois Supreme 

Court Rule 308 (eff. Feb. 26, 2010), which calls upon us to answer the following certified 

question: 

“If a motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint pursuant to [section 2-609 of 

the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-609 (West 2012))] is filed with the 

proposed supplemental complaint attached before the expiration of the statute of 

limitations, but leave of court is not obtained to file such supplemental complaint until 

after the statute of limitations has expired, is the new cause of action stated in the 

supplemental complaint time barred?”

For the reasons that follow, we answer the certified question in the affirmative and remand for 

further proceedings. 

¶ 3 I. BACKGROUND 

¶ 4 The following pertinent facts, which we have gleaned from the parties’ pleadings and 

supporting exhibits, are fairly straightforward. 

¶ 5 In his initial May 2012 complaint against defendants, plaintiff sought to recover 

approximately $13,250 from defendants under alternative theories of (1) breach of contract, 

(2) account stated, and (3) unjust enrichment. The dispute concerned defendants’ alleged 

failure to pay for construction services plaintiff’s company performed on defendant’s roof and 

deck in the summer of 2010. 

¶ 6 On August 29, 2012, Marion sent identical letters to two law offices in Carlinville, Illinois, 

describing the two-year “nightmare” she and Charles experienced since doing business with 

plaintiff’s construction company. According to her letter, Marion found plaintiff’s operation so 

crooked and inept that she reported him to the Illinois Department of Financial and 
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Professional Regulation, contacted the Illinois Attorney General, requested the Macoupin 

County State’s Attorney to press criminal charges, and even wrote her Congressman. After 

describing the actions she took against plaintiff, Marion urged the law offices to help end 

corruption in state agencies and courts, which Marion viewed as unwilling to bring plaintiff to 

justice. 

¶ 7 On August 28, 2013, one day before the expiration of the one-year statute of limitations for 

plaintiff’s defamation claims against Marion, plaintiff filed (under the same case number as his 

May 2012 complaint against defendants) a motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint 

pursuant to section 2-609 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Code) (735 ILCS 5/2-609 (West 

2012)). In the motion–to which plaintiff attached the purported supplemental 

complaint–plaintiff sought “an order granting leave to file a supplement to the complaint 

instanter adding counts IV and V.” (Plaintiff alleged two separate, but identical, counts of 

defamation against Marion because two separate law offices received Marion’s letter.) The day 

plaintiff’s attorney filed the motion at the courthouse, he went to the trial judge’s chambers to 

request that the motion be granted ex parte. The trial judge denied that request. 

¶ 8 As already stated, at a September 26, 2013, hearing, the trial court granted plaintiff’s 

motion for leave to file the supplemental complaint instanter, which resulted in the purported 

supplemental complaint being filed that day. (Plaintiff does not dispute that the purported 

supplemental complaint was filed on September 26, 2013.) 

¶ 9 In October 2013, Marion filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff’s purported supplemental 

complaint pursuant to section 2-619 of the Code (735 ILCS 5/2-619 (West 2012)), arguing that 

the supplemental complaint was barred by the statute of limitations set forth in section 13-201 

of the Code (735 ILCS 5/13-201 (West 2012)). In December 2013, the trial court denied 

Marion’s motion to dismiss. 

¶ 10 Later in December 2013, Marion filed a motion to certify a question of law for 

interlocutory review pursuant to Rule 308. In February 2014, the trial court certified the 

question for interlocutory review. In April 2014, this court denied defendants’ application for 

leave to appeal pursuant to Rule 308. Bentley v. Hefti, No. 4-14-0167 (Apr. 2, 2014) (denying 

petition for leave to appeal). However, in November 2014, the supreme court entered a 

supervisory order directing this court to vacate its April 2014 denial of defendants’ application 

for leave to appeal and “resolve the appeal on its merits.” Bentley v. Hefti, No. 117653 (Ill. 

Nov. 4, 2014) (nonprecedential supervisory order directing vacatur and consideration on 

merits). 

¶ 11 In accordance with the supreme court’s supervisory order, we vacate our earlier decision in 

this case and answer the certified question. 

¶ 12 II. ANALYSIS 

¶ 13 The trial court certified the following question: 

“If a motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint pursuant to [section 2-609 of 

the Code (735 ILCS 5/2-609 (West 2012))] is filed with the proposed supplemental 

complaint attached before the expiration of the statute of limitations, but leave of court 

is not obtained to file such supplemental complaint until after the statute of limitations 

has expired, is the new cause of action stated in the supplemental complaint time 

barred?”
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¶ 14 “The scope of review in an interlocutory appeal brought under Rule 308 is limited to the 

certified question.” Spears v. Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives, 2013 IL App (4th) 

120289, ¶ 15, 986 N.E.2d 216. “Certified questions, by definition, are questions of law that this 

court reviews de novo.” Moore v. Chicago Park District, 2012 IL 112788, ¶ 9, 978 N.E.2d 

1050. 

¶ 15 The statute of limitations at issue in this case provides that actions for defamation “shall be 

commenced within one year next after the cause of action accrued.” 735 ILCS 5/13-201 (West 

2012). Accordingly, to answer the certified question, we must determine whether the filing of a 

motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint constitutes the commencement of the action

set forth in the attached supplemental complaint. We conclude that it does not. 

¶ 16 Section 2-609 of the Code provides that “[s]upplemental pleadings, setting up matters 

which arise after the original pleadings are filed, may be filed within a reasonable time by 

either party by leave of court and upon terms.” (Emphasis added.) 735 ILCS 5/2-609 (West 

2012). By its plain terms, section 2-609 of the Code requires a party to obtain leave of court to 

file a supplemental pleading. In other words, unless and until leave of court is granted, a 

supplemental pleading is not considered filed. We can think of no other reasonable 

interpretation of section 2-609 of the Code, and our research has uncovered no case law setting 

forth a different interpretation. 

¶ 17 Section 2-201(a) of the Code provides that “[e]very action, unless otherwise expressly 

provided by statute, shall be commenced by the filing of a complaint.” 735 ILCS 5/2-201(a) 

(West 2012). Because an action must be “commenced” within the limitations period (735 

ILCS 5/13-201 (West 2012)), and an action is “commenced by the filing of a complaint” (735 

ILCS 5/2-201(a) (West 2012)), a motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint–which by 

its very nature admits that the supplemental complaint is not yet filed–does not toll the statute 

of limitations. Put another way, we answer the certified question in the affirmative. 

¶ 18 As a final matter, we note that plaintiff contends in this appeal, as the lead argument in his 

brief, that the trial court “erred in failing to consider plaintiff’s Motion for Leave to Add 

Counts IV and V as an emergency motion and enter an order granting leave on an ex parte

basis.” Although this claim is not properly before this court because (among other reasons) the 

scope of our review under Rule 308 is limited to the certified question (Spears, 2013 IL App 

(4th) 120289, ¶ 15, 986 N.E.2d 216) and plaintiff did not appeal this alleged error, we 

nonetheless note the complete lack of evidence that an actual emergency existed. The so-called 

“emergency” plaintiff claims he encountered was the imminent expiration of the limitations 

period. However, by our count, plaintiff had 364 days’ advance warning of this event and the 

exact date on which it would occur. A party is not entitled to emergency ex parte relief simply 

because he waited until the last minute to put together a pleading. 

¶ 19 Indeed, plaintiff could have easily avoided this predicament. Throughout this opinion, we 

have referred to plaintiff’s defamation pleading as a purported supplemental complaint 

because it in no way “supplemented” plaintiff’s original complaint, which set forth claims that 

were completely unrelated (at least in any relevant legal sense) to plaintiff’s defamation 

claims. Although plaintiff might have incurred an additional filing fee by bringing his 

defamation claims in a freestanding, separate complaint, his doing so would have 

instantaneously commenced the defamation action inside the limitations period and preserved 

his claims for a potential adjudication on the merits. Instead, plaintiff all but guaranteed that his 

defamation complaint would not be filed within the limitations period when he opted to 
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proceed under section 2-609 of the Code–a relatively arcane pleading statute that carries the 

additional burden and delay of obtaining leave of the court. 

¶ 20 III. CONCLUSION 

¶ 21 For the reasons stated, we answer the certified question in the affirmative and remand for 

further proceedings. 

¶ 22 Certified question answered; cause remanded.