Court Opinion

ID: 9724421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:56:15.921217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:00.161120
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HUTCHINSON, dissenting: I must respectfully disagree with the majority that the legislature intended for the 1,000 feet between an adult entertainment facility and any of the listed protected entities to be measured from property line to property line. Our supreme court recently reiterated the well-established principles of statutory construction. The court stated: “The fundamental rule of statutory interpretation is to give effect to the intention of the legislature. A court first looks to the words of the statute. The language of the statute is the best indication of the legislative intent. When the statutory language is clear, it must be given effect without resort to other tools of interpretation. In interpreting a statute, it is never proper for a court to depart from plain language by reading into a statute exceptions, limitations, or conditions which conflict with the clearly expressed legislative intent.” County of Knox ex rel. Masterson v. The Highlands, L.L.C., 188 Ill. 2d 546, 556 (1999). Accordingly, I do not believe that the plain language of section 5 — 1097.5 supports the majority’s interpretation. The legislature used the concept of “property boundaries” in referring to the protected entities. However, the legislature did not use the concept of property boundary when referring to the facility. Rather, the legislature merely referred to “an adult entertainment facility” and defined an adult entertainment facility by using the terms “club,” “theatre,” “bookstore,” and “video store.” I believe that a reasonable inference from this language is that the legislature intended the measurement to be the distance between the property boundary of the protected entity and the boundary of the facility, whatever form that takes. I would therefore conclude that the language of section 5 — 1097.5 does not support the trial court’s construction of section 5 — 1097.5 to the extent that the construction implied that the measurement should be from property line to property line. While I concede that this analysis then requires an additional inquiry concerning what constitutes the boundary of an adult entertainment facility, this inquiry is easily answered. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “facility” as “[sjomething that is built or installed to perform some particular function, but it also means something that promotes the ease of any action or course of conduct.” Black’s Law Dictionary 591 (6th ed. 1990). This definition suggests that a facility has some specific utilitarian or functional aspect. In view of these utilitarian or functional aspects, I believe that the determination of an adult entertainment facility’s boundary should be made on a case-by-case basis. Something that has utility or serves some function for a facility in one case might not be utilitarian or functional for a facility in another case. In this case, the building, the outdoor sign, the driveway, the parking lot, the septic system, and the water well are obviously utilitarian or functional with respect to the adult entertainment facility that Studio 20 wants to open on the facility parcel. With the exception of the water well, the record shows that all these things are within the boundary of the leased premises. Thus, it would be reasonable to consider the boundary of the leased premises to be the boundary of the adult entertainment facility. Furthermore, a review of the physical evidence, including a current survey, indicates that the majority of the facility parcel is not being used or is subject to an encroachment by a farming operation from a neighboring parcel. Therefore, I believe that for the property boundary of the entire parcel to reasonably be considered the property boundary of the facility, the State would have had to make at least a prima facie showing that the nonleased premises are utilitarian or functional with respect to the facility. The record is devoid of anything tending to make such a showing. Furthermore, the trial court’s and the State’s reliance on cases involving statutes prohibiting the issuance of a liquor license for the sale of liquor within specified distances from protected entities is misplaced in my opinion. The State cites Smith v. Ballas, 335 Ill. App. 418 (1948), De Loian v. Illinois Liquor Control Comm’n, 109 Ill. App. 2d 71 (1969), Kaminski v. Illinois Liquor Control Comm’n, 20 Ill. App. 3d 416 (1974), and Bilandic v. Johnson, 62 Ill. App. 3d 455 (1978), as authority for the proposition that the measurement of the distance between the protected entity and the facility should be from lot line to lot line. Each of these cases is factually distinguishable from this case. None of these cases involved the sale of liquor on leased premises that were less than the entire premises where the nonleased premises served no utilitarian or functional purpose, as in this case. Therefore, I believe that the State failed to show that the nonleased premises in the facility parcel served some utilitarian or functional purpose with respect to the adult entertainment facility. Finally, while I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the evil sought to be remedied here is the purveyance of adult entertainment facilities close by places children or families frequent, it is not this court’s function to change the language of the legislation to accomplish the legislation’s purpose. The language here is clear and unambiguous, and it does not say that the distance between the protected entities and an adult entertainment facility is to be measured property line to property line.