When perturbed property owner Amy Little identified herself as an environmentalist, I urged her to think twice about RedPlum/Local Values, the pink-wrapped ad rag she abominates and has now gone to court to be rid of.
Surely you have tenants who welcome the coupons and news of weekend sales that RedPlum brings them each Wednesday, I said. “I would be willing to bet no one reads those things—no one,” said Little. “They should target their audience, which is probably people over 70. I don’t know anybody who clips coupons who’s under the age of 70.” More RedPlums arrive each week at her properties than her properties have units, she told me, and if one or two of them, unbeknownst to her, actually wind up taken inside, many more wind up moldering in the grass and bushes. She told me about her six-unit property in Little Village where at least eight copies every week are left on the front stoop; the tenants, to avoid tripping over the pile, toss them over the railing into the yard and she has to climb over the railing to collect them. “So I’m risking life and limb to rescue these RedPlums so the building doesn’t look abandoned. At another one of my buildings the snowblower got jammed with a RedPlum that was hidden under the snow.”
When that didn’t work either, she consulted with a Logan Square attorney she knew, Michael Jaskula. He rounded up 24 co-plaintiffs and on May 9 filed a suit accusing the Tribune and Valassis of “trespass; public nuisance; and private nuisance.” The suit alleges that RedPlum continued to be delivered to addresses whose owners repeatedly asked by phone and in writing that delivery stop, among them addresses “where the previous week’s deliveries remain on the porch, lawn, sidewalk or other location, in plain view.” These accumulating RedPlums were allegedly worse than just unsightly; they signaled to burglars “that the property is vacant or that the residents are out of town,” and at least one home was burglarized for that reason.
That’s harsh. But her experience—like mine—is that the local delivery people don’t pay attention. And she added one last detail to her tale of woe. Out in Oak Park, where she lives, they’ve just started delivering RedPlum.
