Court Opinion

ID: 9744972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:26:53.109743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:54.352515
License: Public Domain

SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION UPON DENIAL OF REHEARING Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE THOMAS J. MORAN delivered the opinion of the court: In their petitions for rehearing the plaintiffs, for the first time, assert that written charges and a hearing, as provided for in section 16.13 of “An Act in relation to fire protection districts” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1973, ch. 12712, par. 37.13), are jurisdictional prerequisites to the Board’s action. Plaintiffs assert that, since there is no evidence in the record of written charges, the Board never had jurisdiction and, therefore, reversal rather than remandment is required in this case.  The above argument is based entirely on analogy to section 10—2.1—17 of the Municipal Code (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1973, ch. 24, par. 10—2.1—17), which in Kozsdiy v. O’Fallon Board of Fire & Police Commissioners (1975), 31 Ill. App. 3d 173, was held to be a jurisdictional prerequisite without which the action of the Board in discharging a municipal employee was void. However, this case is not sound authority for the proposition that section 10 — 2.1—17 of the Municipal Code — or the analogous section 16.13 in the present case — creates jurisdictional prerequisites for the discharge of probationary employees, since the recent case of Romanik v. Board of Fire & Police Commissioners (1975), 61 Ill. 2d 422, 425, held that that section did not require written charges or hearing prior to dismissal of a probationary employee. As Kozsdiy is not persuasive authority in view of Romanik, and since plaintiffs cite us no other authority which would indicate that the subject statute or agency rule require written charges as a jurisdictional prerequisite to Board actions against probationary or preprobationary employees, plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing is denied. Petition denied. RECHENMACHER and DIXON, JJ., concur.