Miriam Fisch, an English and media studies teacher at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, has taken her disdain for pre-movie ads to a whole new level.

Her attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday in Cook County against Loews Cineplex Entertainment, demanding money for moviegoers' loss of time and a change requiring the area's dominant theater chain to list the actual starting time of movies.

"I bust my butt to get to a movie on time to see a movie, and I feel like I'm a captive audience," Fisch said. "As a moviegoer, I'm perturbed by this commercial creep."
—Eric Krol, "If you don't like commercials at movies, why not sue?," Daily Herald, February 19, 2003

Mrs. Hodgkinson, co-chairman of the Save Fairfield Committee, a coalition of neighborhood groups that claims 5,000 members, believes the town is about to be destroyed by ''commercial creep,'' the intrusion of office development into residential neighborhoods. This petition drive involved the Collins Office Park, a complex that would draw 2,000 people to the area each day. The woman, Wanda Messick, signed her name on the pad. ''You live in a quiet little town all your life, and then there they go, rezoning just like that, putting up another office building,'' she said. —Andree Brooks, "Should Fairfield shut its doors?," The New York Times, June 16, 1985