Expired Suspension Moots Construction Company’s Appeal

Chester Bross Construction Company was the low bidder on a number of Illinois Department of Transportation projects. But instead of awarding Bross the work, the Department suspended Bross from competing for any Department contracts for two years. The suspension was based on a dispute over whether Bross complied with a required internship program.

Bross asked the trial court to review the Department’s two-year suspension order. Bross appealed after the trial court sustained the suspension.

The two-year suspension expired while the case still was pending in the appellate court. So the first question the Fourth District Illinois Court of Appeals had to answer was whether Bross’s appeal was moot. [ “An issue is moot if no actual controversy exists or where events occur which make it impossible for the court to grant effectual relief.”]

Bross argued that the appeal fell under two exceptions to the mootness doctrine – (1) the public-interest exception and (2) the collateral-consequences exception. But the appellate court ruled in favor of the Department, concluded the exceptions did not apply and the case was moot, and dismissed Bross’s appeal.

Bross’s appeal did not qualify for the public-interest exception because “the question in this case is based on specific evidence and actions involving only plaintiff,” so the appeal “does not present a question of a public nature.”

Nor did the collateral-consequences exception apply. The appellate court ruled that Bross had:

. . . not demonstrated any specific or concrete legal impact likely to result from the suspension. As a result, we find this case does not fall within the collateral-consequences exception to the mootness doctrine. Any company ever suspended by IDOT, as well as anyone else ever subject to an adverse ruling by a court or administrative body, could make this same argument. If we allowed a moot appeal to go forward under the collateral-consequences exception in cases such as this, the exception would nearly eliminate the mootness doctrine.

So the appellate court threw out Bross’s appeal. Read the whole case, Chester Bross Construction v Department of Transportation, 2014 IL App (4th) 130164 (3/27/14), by clicking here.