Joliet to Pay $2 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over 5,500 Overweight Truck Tickets

A city judge who worked for the city. That is what the truckers said was wrong.

The City of Joliet approved a $2 million settlement on Tuesday to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging the city unfairly ticketed thousands of commercial truckers for overweight loads.

The suit challenged a practice in which Joliet forced drivers to appear at City Hall before an administrative hearing officer paid by the city. Truckers argued they should have had the right to take their cases to a Will County Circuit Court judge instead.

"The ink's not dry on the settlement," Interim City Attorney Todd Lenzie told the Joliet City Council. "It's a ballpark figure for what we're talking about settling for."

The numbers behind the tickets

According to Lenzie, the lawsuit covers approximately 5,500 tickets issued between November 2018 and 2023. Each citation carried a $750 fine.

That means the city collected more than $4 million in fines while processing the cases through its own administrative court, Lenzie said. He did not confirm exactly how much was collected during the period.

The Joliet City Council voted to add the $2 million to the 2026 budget to fund the settlement. City spokesperson Sydney Thompson said the money would first come from any available 2026 budget surplus. The remainder would come from city reserve funds, which Thompson said total nearly $100 million.

A Supreme Court ruling changed the game

The legal battle traces back to a 2022 lawsuit filed by Joliet attorney Frank Andreano on behalf of four truckers from Illinois, Missouri, California, and Ontario, Canada. The case evolved into a class-action suit.

The plaintiffs pointed to Joliet's location at the intersection of Interstates 80 and 55 as one of the most heavily trafficked corridors for commercial trucks in the United States.

In April 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a ruling in Cammacho v. City of Joliet that reshaped the legal landscape. The court held that while Joliet, as a home-rule municipality, had the authority to use administrative hearings, the city failed to follow its own ordinances when processing certain reportable offenses.

"The Court held that these offenses were required to be initiated by a uniform traffic citation and adjudicated in the circuit court rather than through the administrative hearing process," Lenzie wrote in a memo to the City Council.

The Supreme Court's decision did not strip Joliet of its home-rule authority to run administrative courts. Instead, it found that Joliet's own code required uniform traffic citations and circuit court adjudication for reportable offenses involving commercial drivers with commercial driver's licenses.

Revenue that drew scrutiny

City officials at the time defended the truck enforcement program as a way to generate new revenue.

Former Joliet Mayor Bob O'Dekirk told the City Council in 2019 that the city collected nearly $1.5 million in truck fines in 2018, up from just $29,000 in 2014.

Municipalities keep fines collected through their own administrative courts. Fines imposed by a circuit court judge are distributed among multiple government entities, including the state and the county.

What happens next

Lenzie told the council the case remains in pending litigation. The settlement is still being finalized.

No timeline was provided for when individual truckers in the class would receive payouts. The city did not disclose how many drivers are included in the certified class.

Joliet has faced other legal challenges over trucking regulations. In late 2024, a court battle dating to 2018 was settled after an Illinois appellate court ruled in favor of Love's Travel Stop, which planned to build a new location in Joliet with 91 truck parking spaces. The facility opened on May 15.