Court Opinion

ID: 9860808
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:33:06.752795+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:26:43.214482
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE RARICK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. Section 19(f)(1) of the Act requires, inter alla, that appeal to the circuit court must be made within 20 days of receipt of the decision of the Commission and that the request for summons include proof of payment of the probable cost of the record. The first motion to dismiss alleged that Frank’s appeal to the circuit court was not filed within 20 days of receipt of the Commission’s decision and opinion on review. The Commission’s decision was received on March 20, 1993, by Dixie Phillips, the office manager of the law firm with which Frank’s attorney, Thomas Kelso, was formerly associated. Phillips forwarded the Commission’s decision to Kelso and he received it on March 27, 1993. Frank’s appeal to the circuit court was filed on April 16, 1993. The majority contends that there is nothing in the record to support Kelso’s claim that he properly notified the Commission of his correct address and that under such circumstances the 20-day period began to run when Phillips signed the return receipt on March 20, 1993. Reviewing the record, I believe the circuit court’s denial of the motion to dismiss on this basis to be correct. According to Frank’s reply to Pass Pets’ motion to dismiss, Kelso had been a partner in the law firm of Beckett, Crewell, and Kelso, and Phillips was the office manager for the firm. The firm was located at 508 South Broadway in Urbana. On December 31, 1992, this firm was dissolved and two new law firms were established: Beckett and Associates, which remained at the Urbana address, and Kelso and Crewell, which relocated to 100 Trade Center Drive in Champaign. Phillips remained with Beckett and Associates. The record also discloses that the Commission’s decision had not been sent directly to Beckett, Crewell, and Kelso, but had initially been sent to 313 Mattis Avenue in Champaign. Kelso, however, had not been at that address since August 1991. It was then apparently forwarded to Beckett, Crewell and Kelso by the post office, where it was signed for by Phillips. The application for adjustment of claim was filed on June 28, 1991. At this time Kelso was associated with the firm of Beckett and Crewell and the firm’s address was 313 Mattis Avenue in Champaign. Reviewing Kelso’s affidavit, it appears that this firm relocated to 508 South Broadway in Urbana in August 1991. Frank’s subsequent request for an arbitration hearing, a preprinted form prepared by the Commission, contains a notice that the arbitrator’s decision would be sent to the firms and addresses listed thereon. Despite Kelso’s listing the Broadway address, the Commission sent the arbitrator’s decision to the old address in Champaign. On October 29, 1992, when Pass Pets filed a petition for review before the Commission, a copy was served on Kelso at the Broadway address. Kelso again relocated his office on December 31, 1992, to 100 Trade Center Drive in Champaign. When the Commission issued its decision and opinion on review, it again sent it to 313 Mattis Avenue in Champaign. The majority assumes that the address to which the Commission directed its decision was the address for Kelso that it carried in its records. As the record, clearly demonstrates, this would be the address on Mattis Avenue, as this was the address to which the decision was first sent. There are two problems with this assumption. First, correspondence from Kelso as early as June 1992 demonstrates that his office was no longer on Mattis Avenue, yet both the arbitrator’s decision and the Commission’s decision were sent to this address. Second, it provides no support for the majority’s determination that the 20-day period started to run when it was signed for by Phillips on March 20, 1993, after it had been forwarded there from the Mattis Avenue address by parties unknown. I believe the Commission’s persistence in sending correspondence to Kelso at the Mattis Avenue address, despite the fact that correspondence from Kelso as early as June 1992 indicated that this was no longer his address, gives rise to the inference that not only did the Commission fail to update its records when Kelso moved to the Urbana address, it likewise failed to update its records when he moved to the Trade Center Drive address. The record demonstrates that Frank’s petition for review was filed on April 16, 1993, exactly 20 days after Kelso received a copy of the Commission’s decision on March 27, 1993. Further, I believe that the majority’s holding in the present caséis in conflict with the well-settled principle that the law favors resolutions on the merits (see Venzor v. Carmen’s Pizza Corp. (1992), 235 Ill. App. 3d 1053, 1058, 602 N.E.2d 81, 84, citing Widicus v. Southwestern Electric Cooperative, Inc. (1960), 26 Ill. App. 2d 102,108-09,167 N.E.2d 799, 803; Moss v. Gibbons (1989), 180 Ill. App. 3d 632, 638, 536 N.E.2d 125, 129.) To completely deny claimant a right to appeal under these circumstances elevates form over substance and runs counter to the preferred tendency "to prevent technicalities from depriving a party of the right to be heard.” Berry v. Industrial Comm’n (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 274, 278, 302 N.E.2d 277, 280, citing Republic Steel Corp. v. Industrial Comm’n (1964), 30 Ill. 2d 311, 196 N.E.2d 654.