Shareholders Brandon Lemley and Paul Rettberg defeated a rather unusual claim that a suburban municipality “enslaved” the plaintiff. The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. The plaintiff alleged that an ordinance that required him to mow the parkway - the strip of grass located between the sidewalk and the street on his property – effectively was slavery. Plaintiff argued that the ordinance amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude because he was given no choice but to engage in manual labor to tend to the parkway that was actually the property of the municipality.
The Circuit Court of the 18th Judicial Circuit in DuPage County rejected Plaintiff’s arguments and dismissed the entire case (including claims for slander of title and equal protection) with prejudice. After all, the United States Supreme Court had previously found a Florida law requiring all able-bodied adults to perform 40 hours of road and bridge construction per year without pay did not violate the 13th Amendment.
