Judge denies Southside Recycling’s request for temporary restraining order

Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County Judge Michael T. Mullen has denied Southside Recycling’s motion to obtain a temporary restraining order in the scrap recycling firm’s lawsuit filed in Illinois state court July 1. Chicago-based Southside Recycling, which has constructed a recycling facility on the city’s southeast side, filed the suit and alleges that the city wrongfully failed to issue a permit needed for the facility to begin operating, despite acknowledging that Southside Recycling had satisfied all the requirements for the permit. The lawsuit also requests damages in excess of $100 million from the city.

According to Mullen’s ruling, the temporary restraining order sought as part of the lawsuit to force the city to issue the operating permit can only be permitted in an extreme emergency. The ruling states that the company still has the option to recover monetary losses resulting from the lawsuit.

“I am concluding, after much consideration and after weighing the parties’ respective positions, that the plaintiffs have not properly established either that any injury or harm that they have sustained or might sustain is irreparable or that they have an inadequate remedy at law. As the plaintiffs have not established each necessary element to obtain a temporary restraining order, the plaintiffs’ motion is denied,” Mullen writes in the ruling.

Steve Joseph, chief executive officer at Stow, Ohio-based Reserve Management Group, which is Southside Recycling’s parent company, says this latest ruling is focused on a temporary injunction Southside Recycling sought in its lawsuit.

“We clearly lost the temporary injunction that we asked for that would have allowed us to begin operations while the city and U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) figure out their plans for additional analysis,” Joseph says. “The judge made it very clear that the breached contract has merits, but he is saying that he doesn’t see that there is immediate or irreversible harm to our company. We obviously weren’t thrilled with that part of the ruling and disagree with his assessment on the matter. But we were heartened by the acknowledgment that the breach of contract is real. Hopefully, that spurs the city to action now that their disingenuous arguments about the contract being unenforceable have been judged to be false.”

The ruling states that an Aug. 30 hearing will address the lawsuit.