Lawsuits residue of Schaumburg's red light camera fracas

Red-light cameras are down in Schaumburg but lawsuits related to the village's brief brush with surveillance technology remain, including one class-action claim.

Lawyers for the village and a Barrington woman who is protesting her $100 ticket held a preliminary skirmish in Cook County court this week in the case.

Charlene Cooper received a ticket for turning right on a red light in Schaumburg near Woodfield Shopping Center on Jan. 7. She contends she stopped, so she appealed the citation. The police officer who approved the violation wasn't present during the appeals hearing and that absence violated her right to due process, the lawsuit alleges.

"She has the right to meet her accuser - the person who reviewed the tape," attorney Steven Miner said.

Miner also charges that after Cooper was fined, Schaumburg installed orange flags drawing attention to signs cautioning drivers about the cameras. She didn't have the benefit of the extra warning, the lawsuit states.

Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said the village has confidence it will prevail in the case.

Regarding the signs, he noted, Schaumburg shouldn't be blamed for efforts to alert motorists. "After we put (the camera) up, we did all that we could to make it more visible," Larson said.

The lawsuit has not yet been certified as a class action. Both sides met in court Monday.

A Daily Herald investigation into red light cameras in the suburbs found that the vast majority of violations go to drivers such as Cooper who are turning right on red. That trend has sparked outrage from motorists and lawmakers, who argue that people who rolling right at a slow rate of speed don't deserve a $100 fine.

The lawsuit seeks reimbursement for fines and unspecified damages.

The location of Cooper's alleged violation - Meacham and Woodfield roads - was the epicenter of an uproar over the cameras. The intersection produced 10,000 tickets generating about $1 million early this year from drivers going right on red. The village received myriad complaints and subsequently pulled cameras from that location and voted to discontinue its contract with the vendor.

Schaumburg also faces two other lawsuits related to the cameras.

The Herald's "Seeing Red" series also found that numerous cameras are installed or are planned for intersections where there's a low number of red-light related crashes.