CITIZENS ORGANIZING PROJECT, Appellant, v. THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES et al., Appellees.
No. 86878
Supreme Court of Illinois
January 21, 2000
Rehearing denied April 3, 2000
189 Ill. 2d 593
Appellate court judgment affirmed in part and reversed in part; cause remanded.
James E. Ryan, Attorney General, of Springfield (Joel D. Bertocchi, Solicitor General, and Erik G. Light, Assistant Attorney General, of Chicago, of counsel), for appellees.
CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON delivered the opinion of the court:
The issue in this case is whether the Citizens Organizing Project (C.O.P.) is entitled to an award of litigation expenses under section 10-55 of the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act (
C.O.P. is a citizens group organized as an Illinois general not-for-profit corporation. It opposed a decision by the Department of Natural Resources to approve a permit for strip mining in Knox County. The permit procedures were governed by the Surface Coal Mining Land Conservation and Reclamation Act (
During the course of the ensuing administrative proceedings, C.O.P. argued that the Department‘s permit decision should be reviewed under a “preponderance of
At the conclusion of those proceedings, C.O.P. filed a complaint for administrative review in the circuit court of Sangamon County pursuant to the Administrative Review Law (
The circuit court affirmed the Department‘s decision to grant the strip mining permit. In so doing, however, it found meritorious C.O.P.‘s challenge to the Department‘s regulation containing the “clear and convincing” burden of proof. Accordingly, it expressly declared the regulation to be invalid. Based on that ruling, the Department removed the “clear and convincing” standard from its regulations and replaced it with a “preponderance of the evidence” standard. 22 Ill. Reg. 5183 (proposed March 20, 1998); 22 Ill. Reg. 20144 (eff. November 5, 1998);
Section 10-55(c) of the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act (
“In any case in which a party has any administrative rule invalidated by a court for any reason, including but not limited to the agency‘s exceeding its statutory author-
ity or the agency‘s failure to follow statutory procedures in the adoption of the rule, the court shall award the party bringing the action the reasonable expenses of the litigation, including reasonable attorney‘s fees.”
For the purposes of this provision, an “administrative rule” encompasses any principle, procedure, or regulation governing an agency‘s conduct or action. See Ardt v. State, 292 Ill. App. 3d 1059, 1063 (1997). This includes regulations governing the standard of proof. See
Because the circuit court sustained C.O.P.‘s challenge to section 1847.3(g) and declared the rule to be invalid, C.O.P. petitioned for an award of its reasonable litigation expenses in accordance with section 10-55(c). That petition was timely filed, contained no procedural defects, and was supported by detailed billing records and an affidavit from counsel explaining the basis for the fees and expenses claimed. C.O.P. subsequently filed two supplements to its petition, including an affidavit from an expert attesting to the reasonableness of the litigation expenses claimed.
As indicated at the outset of this disposition, the circuit court denied C.O.P.‘s petition. C.O.P. appealed, challenging only the denial of its petition for litigation expenses. The propriety of the circuit court‘s rulings in the underlying action for administrative review was not at issue. The appellate court affirmed in an unpublished decision under Supreme Court Rule 23. We granted C.O.P.‘s petition for leave to appeal (177 Ill. 2d R. 315), and the matter is now before us for review.
In undertaking our analysis, we begin with the unassailable fact that when the circuit court disposed of
Section 10-55(c) of the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act (
C.O.P.‘s entitlement to an award of its reasonable litigation expenses is not diminished by the fact that it did not prevail on all of its claims. The purpose of the fee-shifting provisions of section 10-55(c) of the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act is to discourage enforcement of invalid rules and give those subject to regulation an incentive to oppose doubtful rules where compliance
In virtually every instance, an attack on the validity of an administrative regulation will come, as it did here, in the context of a broader challenge to a decision of an administrative agency. The issues will be intertwined, and the difficulties of assessing what litigation expenses are attributable to which theories can be substantial. The legislature was surely aware of these problems when it drafted this legislation.
The law, as written, contains no provisions requiring that compensable litigation expenses be limited to those demonstrably and directly related to the limited question of the rule‘s validity. The law does not even require the party seeking litigation expenses to have prevailed on any other aspect of the case. If you are a party who has brought any case and you succeed in that case in having any administrative rule invalidated by a court for any reason, you are entitled to recover all of your reasonable litigation expenses, including attorney fees. See Ardt, 292 Ill. App. 3d at 1067.
It is difficult to see how any law could be more straightforward or less encumbered by qualification or restriction. Where, as here, the language in a statute is clear and unambiguous, we are not at liberty to depart from the plain language and meaning of the statute by reading into it exceptions, limitations, or conditions that the legislature did not express. People v. Woodard, 175 Ill. 2d 435, 443 (1997).
For the foregoing reasons, C.O.P. is entitled to all reasonable litigation expenses incurred throughout this action, including this appeal. See Ardt, 292 Ill. App. 3d at 1067. The judgments of the circuit and appellate courts are therefore reversed and the cause is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
JUSTICE MILLER, dissenting:
Unlike my colleagues, I do not believe that Citizens Organizing Project (C.O.P.) is entitled to recover all the attorney fees and litigation expenses it incurred in the underlying litigation. Accordingly, I dissent.
Section 10-55(c) of the Administrative Procedure Act states:
“In any case in which a party has any administrative rule invalidated by a court for any reason, including but not limited to the agency‘s exceeding its statutory authority or the agency‘s failure to follow statutory procedures in the adoption of the rule, the court shall award the party bringing the action the reasonable expenses of the litigation, including reasonable attorney‘s fees.”
5 ILCS 100/10-55 (West 1998) .
As an initial matter, I do not agree with the majority that the circuit court properly invalidated the administrative regulation concerning the standard of review of the Department‘s decision. Notably, the hearing officer did not apply the challenged standard in ruling against C.O.P., and therefore the standard was not properly before the circuit court when the court heard the case on administrative review. C.O.P. had no standing to challenge an administrative regulation that did not apply to it. See Pre-School Owners Ass‘n of Illinois, Inc. v. Department of Children & Family Services, 119 Ill. 2d 268, 287 (1988). For these reasons, I do not believe that the circuit court‘s action, on administrative review, in purporting to invalidate the regulation should qualify under section 10-55(c) as a decision invalidating a rule or regulation, triggering application of the fee-recovery provision.
Besides not prevailing on the merits of the case, C.O.P. seeks reimbursement for some legal work that seems entirely unnecessary. As one example, in proceedings before the hearing officer, C.O.P. moved to dismiss briefs filed by the Department and the mining company, arguing that the briefs were filed late. In the alternative, C.O.P. asked the hearing officer to strike the portions of the briefs that referred to evidence admitted in an earlier case; C.O.P. insisted that the evidence had not been properly introduced in these proceedings. Both of C.O.P.‘s requests for relief were wholly without merit. The briefs had been filed in a timely manner: the deadline was a Sunday, and, by administrative rule, as well as standard practice, the other parties had until the next day to submit them.
As this case illustrates, under the majority‘s interpretation of the fee statute, a party can succeed in obtaining the invalidation of an incidental administrative rule or regulation, fail on every other issue, and still recover all its litigation fees and expenses. I do not believe that the legislature, in enacting section 10-55(c), could have intended that result. The recovery of attorney fees was unknown at common law, and therefore statutes permitting their award must be construed narrowly. Carson Pirie Scott & Co. v. State of Illinois Department of Employment Security, 131 Ill. 2d 23, 49 (1989). Moreover, in interpreting statutes, this court will seek to avoid absurd or unjust results. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Yapejian, 152 Ill. 2d 533, 541 (1992). “Where the language of a statute admits of two constructions, one of which would make the enactment absurd and illogical, while the other renders it reasonable and sensible, the construction which leads to an absurd result must be avoided.” Mulligan v. Joliet Regional Port District, 123 Ill. 2d 303, 312-13 (1988). Given the tangential nature of the issue on which C.O.P. prevailed and C.O.P.‘s lack of success in every other aspect of the proceedings, I do not believe that the legislature could have intended an award of litigation expenses of the magnitude sought here; if C.O.P. must be reimbursed for any of its expenses, I would limit recovery under section 10-55(c) accordingly.
JUSTICE BILANDIC joins in this dissent.