Justia Zoning, Planning & Land Use Opinion Summaries

Defendant landowner applied for a zoning change to designate its parcel as a business and commercial zone and for a special exception permit for approval of the site plan of its shopping center project. The Town's Planning and Zoning Commission denied the zone change application and denied as moot Defendant's application for a special exception permit. Defendants appealed, and the trial court judge, Judge Owens, approved Defendant's application for a zone change. During the pendency of Defendant's zone change appeal and upon receipt of Judge Owens's decision, the Commission approved the special exception permit but took no official action regarding the zone change application. Plaintiffs, several individuals, appealed, arguing that the commission acted improperly when it approved Defendant's special exception permit. The superior court sustained the appeal. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the trial court improperly revisited the prior judgment of Judge Owens and too narrowly construed the effect of Owens's decision as well as the actions taken by the Commission in reviewing and approving Defendant's application for the special exception permit. Remanded.

This case centered on the scope of an implied easement located on a lawn that lay between a beachfront development and Long Island Sound. Plaintiffs owned waterfront lots in the development and Defendants owned rear lots. The trial court concluded that the implied easement over the lawn in favor of Defendants conferred only a right-of-way to access the shoreline. Defendants appealed, and an intervening plaintiff cross appealed. The Supreme Court (1) affirmed with respect to the Defendants' appeals, and (2) reversed with respect to the cross appeal, holding that the trial court improperly ordered, in a supplemental memorandum of decision, that the right-of-way could also be used for the purpose of accessing areas other than the shoreline as the record disclosed no support for this finding.

The present matter arose from three related tax appeals involving Plaintiff Goodspeed Airport's property that consisted of a commercial utility airport and forty-three acres of open fields. The superior court denied relief on Plaintiff's claim seeking reclassification and assessment of certain of its real property as open space and disposed of all three appeals. The appellate court concluded that (1) 13.08 acres of Plaintiff's property were ineligible for open space classification; and (2) Plaintiff, notwithstanding the ongoing improper classification of its property by Defendant, the town of East Haddam, was not entitled to judicial relief from the improper assessment of its forty-three acres. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the appellate court improperly concluded that the trial court properly determined that the 13.08 acres were ineligible for open space classification and that Plaintiff was not aggrieved pursuant to Conn. Gen. Stat. 12-117a on the basis of Defendant's ongoing overassessment of the forty-three acres. Remanded.

Letitia Kilby filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, claiming unlawful housing discrimination by Defendants, the town housing authority and a property management company. The Commission found reasonable cause to believe that unlawful discrimination occurred. The trial court then granted Defendants' request to file a civil action in the trial court. Kilby moved to intervene, claiming both intervention as of right and permissive intervention. The trial court denied the motion. The appellate court reversed, concluding that although the statute at issue, Conn. Gen. Stat. 46a-83(d)(2), did not expressly grant Kilby a right of intervention, it impliedly granted Kilby a right of intervention. The Supreme Court granted Defendants' petition for certification to appeal, but while the case was pending, the legislature enacted Conn. Pub. Acts 11-237, which amended the text of section 46a-83 to allow a complainant to intervene as of right in a housing discrimination action brought by the commission on behalf of the complainant. The Court dismissed the appeal, concluding that the significance of Defendants' appeal was substantially undermined by Conn. Pub. Acts 11-237, and, thus, certification was improvidently granted.

Plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court upholding the zoning board of appeals of the city of Stamford's ("board") decision that a dock located on the waters of Stamford Harbor was a neighborhood dock rather than a marina, and therefore, improvements to the dock were not subject to the city's zoning regulations. At issue was whether the trial court properly upheld the board's decision that the Southfield Point Associations' construction of a 196 foot dock and the use of Cook Road Extension for access to and connection with the dock were entirely immune from local zoning regulation merely because they related to water dependent use. The court held that the trial court properly upheld the board's decision and agreed with defendants when the dock and its intersection with Cook Road Extension were located waterward of the mean high water line, where the city normally had no jurisdiction, and when the zoning regulations did not apply to activities that took place on Cook Road Extension.