GRUTZMACHER v. PUBLIC BLDG. COM'N OF CHICAGO
700 F.Supp. 1497 (1988)
William J. GRUTZMACHER, Plaintiff,
v.
PUBLIC BUILDING COMMISSION OF CHICAGO et al., Defendants,
PUBLIC BUILDING COMMISSION Counterclaimant,
v.
William J. GRUTZMACHER, Counterdefendant,
LUBAVITCH CHABAD HOUSE, INC., Plaintiff,
v.
The PUBLIC BUILDING COMMISSION OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
Nos. 87 C 10746, 88 C 8708.
United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.
November 23, 1988.
Supplemental Opinion December 5, 1988.
Jennifer Craigmile Neubauer, Chicago, Ill., for William J. Grutzmacher.
Gary Sternberg, Sternberg & Assoc., P.C., Judd Azulay, Azulay & Azulay, P.C., Chicago, Ill., for Lubavitch Chabad House, Inc.
George N. Leighton, Earl L. Neal, Terence J. Moran, Sharon I. Tiller, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Chicago, Ill., for Public Bldg. Com'n of Chicago, et al.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDERPARSONS, District Judge.
This case first came to this court through plaintiff Grutzmacher's request for an emergency order on the morning of December 22, 1987. The complaint was introduced during a hearing on the motion for a temporary restraining order. Apparently the plaintiff had been given permission to erect a creche on the Daley Center Plaza, but after it was erected employees of the defendant Public Building Commission began taking it down and would have completed dismantling and removing it but for intervention of members of the public who shielded what was left of it with their bodies. It appeared from the facts produced at the emergency hearing that the plaintiff had been granted leave to construct the creche on the Plaza but that afterwards the defendants notified or attempted to notify the plaintiff that they would need a $100,000 litigation bond for indemnification should they be sued for giving plaintiff permission to construct the creche. The same condition had been placed upon the parties who later filed the second case now before the court, Lubavitch, et al., who had in 1987 proposed to place a menorah on the Plaza and had posted the $100,000 cash bond.
This court, after listening to the parties before it last year, granted the temporary restraining order and directed the defendants to allow the plaintiff to restore the creche and permit it to remain on the Plaza until the day after Christmas. The parties in the Grutzmacher case thereafter proceeded to develop their litigation with discovery and pretrial motions throughout most of the subsequent year. By September of 1988 motions and cross-motions for summary judgment had been filed. But before either were ruled upon, plaintiffs were before the court requesting a preliminary injunction with relation to their new request for permission to place their creche on the Plaza for the approaching holiday season of 1988, the defendants having indicated a determination not to grant the request.
In the meantime the plaintiff in the second case, Lubavitch, discovered that the Public Building Commision had determined to not allow either the creche or the menorah to be displayed despite the fact that they, the Lubavitch plaintiffs, had been able to do so in the past. Lubavitch then brought its case, the second case entitled above, against the Public Building Commission, the City of Chicago and its mayor. In its prayer for relief, plaintiff asks for permission to display its menorah on the Daley Plaza and that defendants be temporarily and permanently enjoined from requiring a $100,000 cash bond. To this complaint the City of Chicago and its mayor had been joined as defendants to their case because in Count IV of their complaint they had asked also to be allowed to display the menorah at O'Hare Airport, property of the City which has not been deeded over to the Public Building Commission. This fourth count of the Lubavitch complaint will not be addressed in this decision because the court has severed off that portion of the controversies to cause it to be heard separately from the question of the displays at the Daley Center Plaza.
This second case was filed on October 13, 1988 and was assigned to another judge of this court. Eventually, through the application of local rules relative to related cases by the court's Executive Committee, the second case was transferred to be combined with the Grutzmacher case.
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