Title: Allfirst Trust co. v. County of Loudoun

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

Present:  Hassell, C.J., Keenan, Koontz, Kinser, Lemons, 
and Agee, JJ., and Russell, S.J. 
 
ALLFIRST TRUST COMPANY, N.A., et al. 
 
 
 
          OPINION BY 
v.   Record No. 032554    SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
                                  September 17, 2004 
COUNTY OF LOUDOUN, et al. 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY 
John E. Wetsel, Jr., Catherine C. Hammond, and 
William L. Wellons, Judges 
 
 
This is an appeal from the final order of a special 
three-judge annexation court dismissing a landowner-
initiated annexation proceeding then pending before the 
Commission on Local Government (COLG).  The sole question 
is whether the court correctly decided that the landowners’ 
notice of intent to petition for annexation, filed with the 
COLG, failed to meet the statutory requirements for the 
initiation of such a proceeding. 
BACKGROUND 
 
In 1979, the General Assembly enacted a thorough 
reform of the statutory framework governing annexation 
proceedings, 1979 Acts, Ch. 85, now codified in Title 15.2, 
Chapters 29-39 of the Code, as amended.  Code § 15.2-
3203(A) provides, in pertinent part, that 51% of the 
“owners of real estate in number and land area in a 
designated area” of any territory adjacent to a city or 
town may petition the circuit court of the county for the 
 
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annexation of that territory to the city or town.  This 
statute also requires that the petition set forth the metes 
and bounds of the territory sought to be annexed. 
 
Code § 15.2-2907(A) provides, in pertinent part, that 
no annexation proceeding shall be initiated in any court 
until the petitioner shall have first given notice to the 
COLG of its intention to bring such an action and the COLG 
has held hearings, investigated the case, made findings of 
fact and issued its final report.  The court hearing any 
subsequent annexation action must consider the report of 
the COLG but is not bound thereby. 
 
Code § 15.2-3002 provides for the appointment by this 
Court of a panel of fifteen circuit judges for the purpose 
of hearing annexation and similar cases.  Code § 15.2-3000 
provides that this Court designate three judges from that 
panel to hear any annexation or other case filed in a 
circuit court arising under the provisions of Chapters 32-
36 and 38-41 of Title 15.2 of the Code. 
FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS 
 
On July 6, 2001, Allfirst Trust Company, N.A. and D.C. 
Welsh, Trustees, along with three other parties 
(collectively, the Landowners), filed with the COLG a 
notice of their “intent to petition for annexation of 
unincorporated territory within Loudoun County, Virginia 
 
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into the Town of Leesburg.”  The notice contained copies of 
deeds to included parcels, with tax map references, but 
failed to include a metes and bounds description of the 
entire area sought to be annexed. 
 
On December 26, 2002, prior to any hearings before the 
COLG, the County of Loudoun and its Board of Supervisors 
(collectively, the County), filed a motion for declaratory 
judgment in the circuit court, asserting that the 
Landowners’ notice was fatally defective, seeking an 
adjudication that the COLG lacked jurisdiction of the case 
and praying for an injunction against any further 
proceedings until the matter could be decided by a special 
three-judge court.  This Court designated three judges from 
the statutory panel as a special court to hear and decide 
the case.  The special court set the case for hearing on 
June 11, 2003. 
 
Before the hearing, on February 13, 2003, the 
Landowners filed a second “notice of intent” with the COLG, 
containing a metes and bounds description of the territory 
sought to be annexed, but otherwise substantially the same 
as the first.  On June 6, 2003, the Landowners filed a 
third “notice of intent” with the COLG, deleting two 
parcels of land and eliminating one landowner, but 
otherwise substantially the same as the second. 
 
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The County argued before the special court that the 
lack of a metes and bounds description in the original 
notice was fatal and could not be remedied by subsequent 
amendment.  The County further pointed out that the 
territory sought to be annexed consisted of two non-
contiguous tracts of land “divided by a multiplicity of 
parcels lying just south of the Leesburg Airport property 
and generally on the east and west sides of Sycolin Road.” 
 
The County contended that in the proposed annexation 
area west of Sycolin Road, four different landowners owned 
the ten parcels that constituted that area, but that only 
two of the four were petitioning for annexation, thus 
falling short of the statutory requirement that 51% of the 
“owners of real estate in number . . . in a designated 
area” may initiate an annexation proceeding. Code § 15.2-
3203(A) (emphasis added).  As to the area east of Sycolin 
Road, the County pointed out that petitioning landowners 
owned only 42.8% of the total acreage in that area, while 
the County itself, which opposed the annexation, owned the 
remaining 57.2%.  Thus, the County argued, the petitioning 
Landowners failed to meet the statutory requirement that 
51% of the “owners of real estate in . . . land area in a 
designated area” initiate an annexation proceeding.  Id. 
(emphasis added). 
 
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The Landowners, by responsive pleadings, asserted that 
they had recently filed a second “notice” with the COLG 
which contained a metes and bounds description, but that in 
any event the requirement for such a description applied 
only to annexation petitions filed in court, not to 
proceedings before the COLG.  The Landowners further argued 
that there was no statutory requirement that a landowner’s 
annexation proceeding be restricted to contiguous parcels 
of land and that if the tracts east and west of Sycolin 
Road were considered together as the “designated area,” 
they had met the statutory 51% requirements as to both 
number and land area. 
 
The parties submitted the case to the special court on 
stipulated facts and exhibits, supported by briefs and 
arguments of counsel.  On June 11, 2003, the special court 
issued a letter opinion ruling that the Landowners’ 
“initial filing did not substantially comply with the 
statutory requirement for a metes and bounds description, 
which defect could not be cured by subsequent filings” and 
that the Landowners had further failed to meet the “51% 
statutory requirements in each of the two separate areas 
proposed to be annexed.”  The court entered a final order 
dismissing the proceedings before the COLG and directing 
 
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the COLG “to terminate all review of the same.”  We awarded 
the Landowners an appeal. 
ANALYSIS 
 
Annexation proceedings are typically complex, 
protracted and expensive to the governing bodies involved, 
imposing a heavy fiscal burden upon taxpayers.  The 
statutory revisions of 1979 addressed the problem in part 
by the creation of the COLG, an impartial expert body, to 
assist the courts.  Proceedings before the COLG, however, 
add an additional step to the process, which necessarily 
adds to its expense.  It is therefore imperative that a 
special court promptly resolve any attack on the 
jurisdiction of the COLG before such an expense is incurred 
“all for naught.”  Bedford County v. City of Bedford, 243 
Va. 330, 335, 414 S.E.2d 838, 841 (1992) (quoting King v. 
Hening, 203 Va. 582, 586, 125 S.E.2d 827, 830 (1962). 
 
The County argued, and the special court agreed, that 
the requirement of a metes and bounds description is 
jurisdictional and was fixed at the time of the Landowners’ 
initial COLG filing, and could not be cured by amendment or 
subsequent filings with the COLG, citing Code § 15.2-2908: 
 
An action or proceeding to which the Commission on 
Local Government has jurisdiction shall be deemed to 
have been instituted upon the initial notice to the 
Commission required by subsection A of § 15.2-2907. 
 
 
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The County further relies on City of Roanoke v. Roanoke 
County, 214 Va. 216, 198 S.E.2d 780 (1973) and City of 
Charlottesville v. Albemarle County, 214 Va. 365, 200 
S.E.2d 551 (1973), where we held that the jurisdictional 
sufficiency of an annexation petition must be determined as 
it stood on the date of its initial filing in court. 
 
Those cases, however, were decided before the 
statutory revisions of 1979, which provided for 
administrative proceedings before the COLG as a 
prerequisite to annexation actions in court.  Although 
those cases continue to apply to judicial proceedings, the 
COLG is empowered by Code § 15.2-2903(1) “[t]o make 
regulations, including rules of procedure for the 
conducting of hearings.”  The rules adopted by the COLG 
pursuant to that authority are more permissive: 
 
Any party giving notice to the commission of a 
proposed action . . . may submit with such notice as 
much data, exhibits, documents, or other supporting 
materials as it deems appropriate; however, such 
submissions should be fully responsive to all relevant 
elements of the applicable section of Part IV (1 VAC 
50-20-540 et seq.) 
 
1 VAC § 50-20-190 (emphasis added). 
 
Section 50-20-540 of Title 1 of the Virginia 
Administrative Code, referred to in the foregoing 
regulation, requires a city or town to file with its notice 
of proposed annexation a “written metes and bounds 
 
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description of the boundaries of the proposed city having, 
as a minimum, sufficient certainty to enable a layman to 
identify the proposed new boundary.”  Neither the statutes 
nor the COLG’s regulations require that a landowner’s 
initial notice to the COLG contain a metes and bounds 
description as a jurisdictional prerequisite. 
 
The County correctly argues that it would be 
difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether the 
Landowners met the statutory 51% requirements in the absence 
of an adequate metes and bounds description, but the COLG 
can, and did in this case, provide a remedy for that problem 
under its rules.  Section 50-20-450 of Title 1 of the 
Virginia Administrative Code permits an applicant, with 
permission of the COLG, to supplement its initial filing 
with additional materials.  The COLG took no action in this 
case before the Landowners, having sought and obtained such 
permission, had filed a metes and bounds description. 
 
We conclude that the special court erred in applying 
to proceedings before the COLG the rules concerning a metes 
and bounds description that would apply to an annexation 
petition filed in court.  Nevertheless, because of the 
conclusion we reach with respect to the 51% requirements, 
the error was harmless. 
 
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The dispositive question before us is whether 
landowners may initiate an annexation proceeding under Code 
§ 15.2-3203 by combining non-contiguous tracts of land, 
without meeting the statutory requirement that they 
constitute 51% of the owners of real estate “in number and 
land area” within each separate tract sought to be annexed.  
We conclude that they may not. 
 
We held, in Norfolk County v. City of Portsmouth, 186 
Va. 1032, 1049-50, 45 S.E.2d 136, 144 (1947) that where a 
city annexes non-contiguous tracts of suburban land, they 
all become a part of the newly-constituted city and their 
lack of contiguity is immaterial.  We further observed, in 
that case, that the opposition of the majority of the 
residents of the area sought to be annexed was immaterial 
because the desirability of annexation was to be determined 
from the standpoint of the needs of the area for urban 
government, rather than the wishes of individual residents. 
 
By contrast, the General Assembly has provided a very 
different design for annexation proceedings initiated by 
landowners.  Code § 15.2-3203(A) allows such proceedings 
only where they are initiated by “fifty-one percent of the 
owners of real estate in number and land area in a 
designated area.”  This language is plain and unambiguous.  
Its obvious purpose is to ensure that the annexation is 
 
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favored by the majority of the landowners, in both numbers 
and acreage, in the area affected by it.  An equally 
important purpose of the statutory language, as we construe 
it, is to ensure that a non-contiguous area, in which the 
majority may oppose the annexation, is not swept into it by 
the sheer force of numbers in the area in which it is 
favored.  Significantly, Code § 15.2-3203(A) explicitly 
provides that in cases brought under it, “the special court 
shall not increase the area of the territory described in 
the petition,” while the court, in a city-initiated 
proceeding, “may include a greater or smaller area than that 
described in the ordinance or petition.”  Code § 15.2-
3211(1). 
CONCLUSION 
 
We conclude that where landowners seek to initiate 
annexation proceedings under Code § 15.2-3203 that include 
non-contiguous territories, they must constitute 51% of the 
“owners of real estate in number and land area” within each 
separate territory.  That requirement is jurisdictional, and 
if it is not met, the COLG has no authority to proceed with 
the case.  Because the special court correctly so ruled, we 
will affirm its final order. 
Affirmed.