{ "id": 5157689, "name": "City of Chicago v. The Ferris Wheel Company", "name_abbreviation": "City of Chicago v. Ferris Wheel Co.", "decision_date": "1895-10-31", "docket_number": "", "first_page": "384", "last_page": "386", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "60 Ill. App. 384" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "Ill. App. Ct.", "id": 8837, "name": "Illinois Appellate Court" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 29, "name_long": "Illinois", "name": "Ill." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "123 Ill. 350", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "58 Ill. App. 625", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. App.", "case_ids": [ 5083439 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-app/58/0625-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 337, "char_count": 4343, "ocr_confidence": 0.497, "pagerank": { "raw": 5.198198879333689e-08, "percentile": 0.3258159066416613 }, "sha256": "4ba1334332577afecad6622714029d94b71ae5185e666f6beb86e08f6de48a61", "simhash": "1:f924ae945c4c0658", "word_count": 743 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T15:22:36.351146+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "City of Chicago v. The Ferris Wheel Company." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "Mr. Presiding Justice Gary\ndelivered the opinion oe the Court.\nThis is an appeal from another interlocutory order granting an injunction. The decision on the first one is reported in 58 Ill. App. 625.\nWhen that decision was made, an ordinance was immediately adopted, the effect of which is to require a revolving wheel, carrying passengers for gain, to pay $50 for each day as a license fee; and prohibiting it upon any lot or inclosure, any part of which is within 1,500 feet of any of the public parks of the city.\nThe lot or inclosure of the Ferris Wheel is within a little more than 1,100 feet from Lincoln Park. Whether that ordinance was validly adopted\u2014which the appellee questions \u2014we shall not determine.\nAt the time of its adoption, the appellee had rightfully\u2014 as the decision of this court in the first case requires us now to hold\u2014expended $12,000 upon the work of erecting the wheel upon its own property, where its right to erect it was as perfect as its right to plant potatoes. The effect of the ordinance is to confiscate that expenditure.\nAssume the competency of the city to fix the place and terms for an entertainment of the character of the Ferris Wheel before the expenditure begins, yet may the city, after the expenditure of such a large sum toward its erection, then fix terms that are prohibitory ?\nThe total expenditure now\u2014for of the progress of such a gigantic undertaking we may almost take judicial notice\u2014 must be very largely more than twelve thousand dollars; and if the city is justified in its action, when but the twelve thousand had been expended, it might have waited until a hundred thousand was invested, and then made it a total loss.\nThe object seems to be to do by indirection what there is not quite the confidence to attempt to do directly. The statute empowers cities and villages \u201c to license, tax, regulate, suppress and prohibit, hawkers, peddlers, pawnbrokers, keepers of ordinaries, theatricals and other exhibitions, shows and amusements, and to revoke such license at pleasure.\u201d Ch. 24, Art. 5, Cl. 41, R. S. Yet in \u2018Village of Des Plaines v. Payer, 123 Ill. 350, the Supreme Court held that the village could not prevent picnics and open air dances.\nThe record of this case presents this wheel as offering an entertainment as innocent as Arcadian simplicity ever enjoyed.\nAn ordinary, as the word is used in the statute quoted\u2014 if we accept the dictionary definition\u2014is an eating house where there is a fixed price for a meal\u2014what we usually regard as the special feature which distinguishes a hotel kent on. the American plan from one kept on the European plan. Oan the city of Chicago by exorbitant license fees compel an abandonment of the American custom, and thereby reduce the value of hotel property in Chicago by an amount which can not be conjectured ?\nThese decisions we make on interlocutory orders can not be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Perhaps that consideration may prevent the application of the general rule\u2014 should this case ever reach this court on appeal from a final decree\u2014that the law of a case is settled for that court by \u25a0 the decision on a first appeal.\nThe case shows that the license fees to principal theaters is three hundred dollars per year, and that the highest license to unenumerated permanent performances is fifty dollars per month. This last sum the appellee offered to pay.\nWe have, on this record, nothing to do with the question whether the city should accept it; but the injunction to restrain the city from interfering with the operation of the wheel while the appellee pays it to the appellant, or into court, is affirmed.", "type": "majority", "author": "Mr. Presiding Justice Gary" } ], "attorneys": [ "Wm. G. Beale, Corporation Counsel, attorney for appellant; Wilson, Moore & MoIlvaine and Bubens & Mott, of counsel.", "Green, Bobbins & Honors, attorneys for appellee; Wm. A. Vincent, of counsel." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "City of Chicago v. The Ferris Wheel Company.\n1. Ordinances\u2014License Fees\u2014Confiscation of Property Invested.\u2014 An ordinance requiring a license for a business, lawful in itself, which amounts to a confiscation of the property invested in such business or to a prohibition of the business, is void.\nInterlocutory Order, granting an injunction. Appeal from the Superior Court of Cook County; the Hon. John Barton Payne, Judge, presiding. Heard in this court at the October term, 1895.\nAffirmed.\nOpinion filed October 31, 1895.\nWm. G. Beale, Corporation Counsel, attorney for appellant; Wilson, Moore & MoIlvaine and Bubens & Mott, of counsel.\nGreen, Bobbins & Honors, attorneys for appellee; Wm. A. Vincent, of counsel." }, "file_name": "0384-01", "first_page_order": 382, "last_page_order": 384 }