Court Opinion

ID: 9519705
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:23:11.658447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:37.331597
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, specially concurring: While I am in accord with the result reached here, I fear that the majority’s explanation as to why the “contact” issue was waived may be relied upon as a precedent, and this would, in my judgment, be misleading. The majority states that the circuit judge “did not address the propriety of dismissing the ‘contact’ count” (109 Ill. 2d at 352), that the plaintiff failed to specifically challenge dismissal of that count, and therefore the issue is waived. This analysis, as I view it, misreads the record. It also involves an incorrect application of the principle that an issue must be raised in the trial court in order to be preserved for review. A separate count of plaintiffs amended complaint alleged that she was injured when her vehicle had physical contact with that of another motorist. The defendant’s motion to dismiss raised the sufficiency of the entire complaint, including the “contact” count, on the ground that the contract of insurance required that the parties settle disputes by arbitration. At the hearing on defendant’s motion, counsel for the insurance company specifically mentioned both the "contact” and “no contact” allegations of the complaint. The circuit judge expressly dismissed “the case (both counts)” with prejudice. Thus it is untenable to maintain that the circuit judge did not address the “contact” count. This is the point on which I view the majority opinion as misleading. Inasmuch as the “contact” count was before the court, and the court ruled upon it, nothing further was required to preserve the issue for review. That plaintiff’s argument centered on the “no contact” issue is irrelevant. This is not a case in which the plaintiff failed to object to the circuit court’s procedures in dismissing the complaint. (See Hargrove v. Gerill Corp. (1984), 124 Ill. App. 3d 924.) Instead the claimed error resulted from the court’s substantive ruling. Plaintiff therefore, contrary to the majority’s reasoning, was entitled to raise the contact issue on her appeal. Nonetheless, by failing to raise the issue until the petition for rehearing in the appellate court, the plaintiff did finally waive it. Villaqe of Mundelein v. Taylor (1985), 130 Ill. App. 3d 819, 825.