The simple answer to the question of why we’re being sued is that some elected and appointed Village officials put us in this position last December when they approved a commercial horse boarding amendment to our code which clearly favored one party over another in a private lawsuit that did not involve our Village.
In order to fully understand the rationale behind the suit, residents need to understand the history of one commercial horse boarding operation in the Village that has, in our opinion, consumed an inordinate amount of time, energy and taxpayers’ money for too long now. The best way to illustrate this is with excerpts from the complaint against the Village as follows:
- The issue of commercial horse boarding in Barrington Hills has been litigated in the Circuit Court of Cook County in two separate cases and has been subject to two Appellate Court opinions.
- Both of those proceedings involved the large-scale commercial horse boarding operation conducted by Benjamin LeCompte at Oakwood Farms which is located at 362 Bateman Road.
- The first lawsuit was initiated by Benjamin LeCompte against the Village in Benjamin B. LeCompte, et al. v. Zoning Board of Appeals For The Village of Barrington Hills, et al. (Civil Case No. 09 CH 00934) (“First Lawsuit”). In the First Lawsuit, LeCompte appealed the Village Board’s issuance in January 2008 of a cease and desist order* which directed LeCompte to stop operating a large-scale commercial horse boarding operation.
- The Circuit Court, in a decision dated January 15, 2010, held that LeCompte’s large-scale commercial horse boarding operation conducted at Oakwood Farm was not in compliance with the Village Zoning Code. LeCompte appealed that decision.
- Although the Village prevailed in that case and the subsequent appeal by LeCompte, the Village did absolutely nothing to enforce that judgment or to enforce its Zoning Ordinance. The Village did not even levy a fine against LeCompte.
- On December 17, 2010, Attorney Steven Schulte, counsel for Drury, directed a letter to the Village attorney requesting that “the Village take all necessary actions to immediately enforce the cease and desist order by no later than December 31, 2010 (almost three years after its issuance) and take all steps necessary to recover all fines assessed against the LeComptes since January 10, 2008.” Again, no action was taken by the Village.
- On January 31, 2011, Drury initiated a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County (James Drury III v. Benjamin B. LeCompte, et al (Civil Case No.11 CH 3852)) against Benjamin LeCompte pursuant to the Adjacent Landowner Statute, 65 ILCS 5/11-13-15, (“Second Lawsuit” or “Drury- (Michael) McLaughlin [Note: no relation to the current Village President] Lawsuit”), seeking an order enjoining LeCompte from operating a commercial horse boarding operation at Oakwood Farms in violation of Village zoning laws.
- Five months later, on June 30, 2011, the Appellate Court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court in the First Lawsuit. In that decision, Benjamin B. LeCompte, et al. v. Zoning Board of Appeals For The Village of Barrington Hills, et al., Case No. 1-10-0423 (later published September 21, 2011 as 2011 IL App (1st) 100423) (“LeCompte I”), the Appellate Court held that the commercial horse boarding operation of LeCompte at Oakwood Farm violated the Zoning Ordinances of the Village; held that the use of the land at Oakwood Farm for the commercial boarding of horses is not agriculture as defined in section 5-2-1 of the Village Zoning Code; and that since the commercial boarding of horses is not agriculture under section 5¬5-2(A) of the Zoning Code, it is not a permitted use in a R-1 zoned district in the Village.
- In James J Drury III et al. v. Benjamin LeCompte et al., 2014 IL App (1St) 121894¬U (“LeCompte II”), a copy which is attached as Exhibit D, the Appellate Court for the second time addressed large-scale commercial horse boarding at Oakwood Farm. In that case, the Appellate Court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the Drury-McLaughlin Lawsuit. The Court discarded the home occupancy defense advanced by LeCompte and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings.
- Shortly after the remand in LeCompte II, LeCompte initiated a petition for a text amendment in June 2014 with the Village to permit large-scale commercial horse boarding as a permitted use in the residential zoning districts in the Village (“LeCompte Text Amendment“). LeCompte’s text amendment called for retroactivity back to June 26, 2006.
- The Commercial Horse Boarding Text Amendment which passed in December 2014 is very similar to the LeCompte Text Amendment.
- The Village Board enacted into law, over the Village President’s veto, on February 23, 2015, the Commercial Horse Boarding Text Amendment that is the subject of this action.
*[It should be noted that the cease and desist order issued to Oakwood Farms came as a result of complaints from a number of neighboring property owners.]
There are many more events we could detail since the first complaints were voiced regarding the operations at Oakwood Farms such as campaign donation disclosures, a letter purportedly authored by the Village Code Enforcement Officer to the owner of Oakwood Farms, etc., but for the sake of brevity, we’ve chosen not to repeat what’s been chronicled in these pages already.
What these and other points do bear out is the prior administration and previous village Boards did little to nothing to enforce the codes when it came to Oakwood Farms, and essentially, people like Jim Drury had to proceed through the court system on their own at great expense. When it became apparent Drury was succeeding with an April 2014 ruling, a flawed, conflicted and accelerated process quickly began to derail his hard fought efforts.
Settling the suit would allow for a more measured process to begin addressing all scales of horse boarding in Barrington Hills. Not settling will undoubtedly lead to years of unnecessary legal expenses to defend an ordinance that had no business being passed in the first place.