Court Opinion

ID: 9716020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:23:50.727534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:51.540666
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE KNECHT, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. Finney’s cause of action for contribution arose when she was sued by the original plaintiffs. Public Act 89 — 7 did not extinguish the right to bring a contribution action. Finney should have filed a contribution action against the City within the applicable statute of limitations. Such an action would not have been meritless, and we do not know if it would have been dismissed. To the extent the law was in a state of flux, the contribution action would have both preserved her rights and prompted the trial court to carefully consider whether existing law was contradictory. A perusal of the law would have put Finney on notice the contribution statute had not been changed by Public Act 89 — 7 and the right to contribution still existed in some form, although it conflicted with the apparent intent of the legislature in enacting the Act. The obstacle posed by the simultaneous adoption and retention of the two contradictory doctrines of several liability in the new section 2 — 117 of the Code and the right to recovery of damages from any one or more defendants (joint and several liability) retained in section 4 of the Contribution Act was one of the reasons given by the court in Best for finding section 2 — 117 of the Code to be unconstitutional. Best, 179 Ill. 2d at 424-25, 689 N.E.2d at 1085. This contradiction, and the well-known fact Public Act 89 — 7 had been declared unconstitutional by circuit courts and that ruling was being appealed to the supreme court, makes untenable Finney’s argument that she reasonably relied on her right to several liability under the Act. I would affirm the trial court.