Justia Zoning, Planning & Land Use Opinion Summaries

Laclede Gas Company maintained gas lines along Pitman Hill Road in St. Charles County. Pitman Hill Road and the gas lines were located within areas established as public roads on five recorded subdivision plats. Each of the subdivision plats first established public roads and then designated the roads as utility easements. The plats specifically stated that one of the purposes of the utility easements was for the installation and maintenance of gas lines. The County planned to widen Pitman Hill Road, which required Laclede to relocate its gas lines. Laclede declined to pay for the relocation, after which the County filed a declaratory judgment action to require Laclede to bear the cost of relocation. The circuit court entered summary judgment in favor of the County. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the County was required to reimburse Laclede for displacing the gas lines from Laclede's utility easement because the easements were constitutionally cognizable property interests and, therefore, requiring Laclede to relocate its gas lines without compensation would amount to an unconstitutional taking of private property.

In 2007, Davison County adopted a county-wide plan to reassess agricultural structures. The County reassessed agricultural structures in four of its twelve townships that year. Donald and Gene Stehly, who owned agricultural structures in the four reassessed townships, initiated a declaratory judgment action, alleging that the plan to reassess four townships each year created an unconstitutional lack of uniform taxation within the county. The trial court concluded that the Stehlys' claim failed because they did not establish lack of uniformity within a single taxing district as required by the South Dakota Constitution. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) townships are taxing districts under the Constitution, and (2) a reassessment plan that creates a temporary lack of uniform taxation among townships within a county is constitutional.

Over a period of two years, the City of Sioux Falls issued Daniel Daily four citations for a concrete extension to his driveway. Daily appealed each of the citations, but a hearing was held only on the final two citations received. Daily then initiated a declaratory judgment action against the City. The trial court ultimately concluded that the City's administrative appeals process, both as written and as applied, and the City's enforcement of its zoning ordinances violated Daily's constitutional rights to procedural due process and equal protection. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) because the hearing examiner in this case did not hold the City to its burden of proof, the City's administrative appeals process deprived Daily of a protected property interest without due process of law; and (2) the hearing examiner's application of the rules of evidence deprived Daily of a fair hearing.

In an effort to regulate gravel pits within the county, the Gallatin County Board of Commissioners (Commission) created an interim zoning district and proposed creation of four permanent zoning districts throughout the county. The Gateway Opencut Mining Action Group (GOMAG) sought an injunction against the Commission, claiming the public comment provision of the applicable zoning statute, Mont. Code Ann. 76-2-205(6), was unconstitutional. Subsequently, GOMAG and Gallatin County agreed to defer certain statutorily-required actions until GOMAG's injunction request was heard by the district court. Meanwhile, several county farms and ranchers and two gravel pit owners (Intervenors) intervened in the action, seeking summary judgment on the ground that the Commission had failed to act within the statutorily-required time and, therefore, the case was moot. The district court granted Intervenors' motions for summary judgment. On appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed, holding that because protests filed under the challenged statute had no impact on the course of the Commission proceedings and that no constitutional violation capable of repetition occurred here, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to Intervenors on the basis of mootness.

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.

Defendant appealed convictions for conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of crack cocaine, causing death by use of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime, murder in the course of drug conspiracy, and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. Defendant contended that he was entitled to acquittal on some counts by reason of double jeopardy and the sufficiency of the evidence, to resentencing on other counts, and to a new trial. The court held that there was sufficient evidence to convict defendant where a jury could reasonably conclude that defendant had inferentially instructed another individual to kill the victim; that Judge Jones' decision to exclude certain portions of the tapes of jailhouse telephone conversations was not an abuse of discretion and, if the Judge had committed an error, it was harmless; that any residual prejudice from a witness's statement was negligible because the information regarding defendant's arrest was already before the jury; that the record was insufficient to allow adjudication of defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim; and that the Double Jeopardy clause did not bar the government from getting "one complete opportunity" to achieve a conviction on the greater offense by retrial of that count where the jury in the first trial convicted defendant on the lesser offense and failed to reach a verdict on the greater offense. The court rejected defendant's remaining claims and affirmed the judgment.

Plaintiff sued defendants, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Alaska Department of Transportation (Alaska), and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (Alyeska), in federal court, alleging causes of action for inverse condemnation, injunctive relief, nuisance, breach of fiduciary duties, and civil rights violations. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed the action against the BLM and Alaska on the basis of sovereign immunity. The court held that federal sovereign immunity barred plaintiff's inverse condemnation, injunctive relief, and civil rights violations claims against the United States, but that the Federal Tort Claims Act, 25 U.S.C. 345, could provide a waiver of the government sovereign immunity for plaintiff's nuisance and breach of fiduciary duties claims. Additionally, the court held that the Eleventh Amendment barred plaintiff's action against Alaska in its entirety. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed in part and reversed in part and remanded.

Defendant was convicted for making and subscribing to a false tax return and multiple counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, and securities fraud. Defendant appealed his sentence on the following four grounds: (1) the application of the 2001 version of the Sentencing Guidelines to his case violated the ex post facto clause; (2) the district court used improper methodology in computing the amount of loss under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(1); (3) the district court committed plain error in applying the U.S.S.G. 3B1.1(a) leader/organizer enhancement; and (4) the district court imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence. The court held that it was not plain error for the district court to apply the 2001 Sentencing Guidelines; the district court correctly calculated the amount of loss pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2B1.1; the district court did not commit plain error in applying the leader/organizer four-level enhancement; and the sentencing court imposed a substantively reasonable sentence and did not abuse its discretion. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

These three closely related appeals arose out of two district court cases, each involving a different tract of land owned by the Avoyelles Parish School Board (School Board), where neither tract was accessible by public road and both shared borders with the Lake Ophelia Wildlife Refuge (Refuge), which was owned by the United States Department of Interior (Department). The School Board filed these suits against all adjoining landowners, including the Department, to fix the School Board's legal rights of passage to the respective enclosed lands. The district court fixed rights of passage that burdened Refuge lands and concluded that the Department could not impose certain desired restrictions on the School Board's actions on Refuge lands. On appeal, the court reversed both judgments in full and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant, a former Senator in the New York State Legislature, appealed from a judgment entered in district court following his conviction of two counts of mail fraud; one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and federal-program fraud; and one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, federal-program fraud, and wire fraud. On appeal, defendant contended principally that the district court abused its discretion in denying his motion to withdraw his guilty plea, erred in calculating the imprisonment range recommended by the advisory Sentencing Guidelines, and erred in ordering restitution without proof that the persons characterized by the government as victims were directly harmed by his offense conduct. The court considered all of the parties' contentions in support of their respective positions and, except as indicted, have found them to be without merit. Accordingly, the court vacated the August 23, 2010 order and remanded for further proceedings with respect to the amount of restitution to be ordered and the judgment of conviction, as well as all other aspects of defendant's sentence, were affirmed.