Title: Umstattd v. Centex Homes
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 062152
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: September 14, 2007

Present:  Hassell, C.J., Keenan, Koontz, Kinser, and Lemons, 
JJ., and Russell and Lacy1, S.JJ. 
 
KRISTEN C. UMSTATTD, MAYOR, 
ET AL. 
                              OPINION BY 
 
 
 
SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
v.  Record No. 062152  
       September 14, 2007 
 
CENTEX HOMES, G.P. 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY 
James H. Chamblin, Judge 
 
 
This appeal presents the question whether mandamus was an 
appropriate remedy to compel a local land development official 
to accept an application for a subdivision and a preliminary 
subdivision plat.  For the reasons stated below, we conclude 
that mandamus was not a proper remedy. 
Facts and Proceedings 
 
The essential facts are undisputed.  In 2003, Centex 
Homes, G.P., a Nevada general partnership (Centex), was 
contract purchaser of a 324-acre tract of land in the Town of 
Leesburg.  The property had long been zoned R-1, a category 
permitting subdivision into one-acre lots.  Centex sought 
rezoning into a category permitting more dense development, 
but ultimately concluded that its chances of success were 
“slim” and decided to proceed with development permitted as a 
matter of right under the existing R-1 zoning.  
                     
1 Justice Lacy participated in the hearing and decision of 
this case prior to the effective date of her retirement on 
August 16, 2007. 
 
2
 
To that end, Centex prepared an application with an 
attached preliminary subdivision plat and, following the 
procedure required by the Town’s ordinances, submitted it to 
the Town on January 23, 2006.2  The planned subdivision, to be 
called “Meadowbrook,” consisted of 191 single-family detached 
homes.  Centex included with the application the required fee 
of $21,600.  On February 2, 2006, the Town’s Chief of Current 
Planning sent a letter to Centex stating that the Town was 
rejecting the preliminary subdivision plat “because of the 
existence of significant deficiencies.”  
 
The letter of rejection pointed out six grounds upon 
which the Town relied:  
(1) The application failed to contain deed book and 
tax map references for the parcels of land included 
in the subdivisions as required by the subdivision 
ordinance;  
(2) The plat failed to include “suitable 
information” concerning the coordination of streets 
within the subdivision with existing or planned 
neighboring streets in the area, particularly the 
planned “Battlefield Parkway;”  
(3) The plat failed to comply with the Town’s Design 
and Construction Standards Manual in that it allowed 
direct access from driveways into streets having a 
traffic count of more than 2000 vehicles per day; 
(4) The plat violated a land development regulation 
by creating blocks more than 1200 feet in length; 
(5) The plat violated a land development regulation 
by failing to provide that improvements to existing 
                     
2 The application and plat were submitted, rejected, and 
resubmitted three times.  The proceedings involved in the 
first and second submissions are not pertinent to this appeal. 
 
 
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streets adjoining the subdivision would meet minimum 
standards; and  
(6) The plat failed to conform to the Design and 
Construction Standards Manual by locating sewer 
lines along rear lot lines rather than along the 
centerlines of public rights of way “whenever 
possible.” 
 
 
Centex filed a complaint in the circuit court in two 
counts.  The first count was a petition for a writ of mandamus 
to compel the Town to accept and process the application to a 
final decision by the Town’s planning commission.  The second 
count was a motion for a declaratory judgment that would 
declare the right of Centex to have its application accepted 
and processed by the Town’s officials and to declare unlawful 
any local ordinance or regulation that would authorize the 
Town to refuse to do so. 
 
The complaint asserted that the Town’s real reasons for 
rejecting the application were to compel the subdivider to 
“reserve, dedicate, or build Battlefield Parkway, and to make 
improvements to adjoining and off-site roads in violation of 
Virginia law, and the Virginia and United States 
Constitutions.”  Centex contended that the required deed book 
and tax map references were in fact shown on the second page 
of the plat and that all other reasons the Town had given for 
refusing to accept the application were “pretextual,” trivial, 
beyond the Town’s authority and inapplicable to a subdivision 
 
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that was a matter of right under the existing zoning 
ordinance. 
 
Centex pointed out that the ultimate authority to grant 
or deny the application resided with the planning commission 
and not with the local officials, whose duties were purely 
ministerial.  Centex contended that if its application were 
wrongfully denied by the planning commission, it would be 
entitled to seek judicial review under Code § 15.2-2260, but 
that refusal by the local officials to accept the application 
left the applicant without any access to the courts and that 
there was no adequate remedy at law for any such arbitrary or 
unlawful refusal.  After an ore tenus hearing, the circuit 
court agreed with Centex and awarded a writ of mandamus, 
directing the Town to accept and process the application in 
accordance with law.  The court did not decide the claim for 
declaratory judgment, evidently concluding that it was 
rendered moot by the award of mandamus.  We awarded the Town 
an appeal. 
Analysis 
 
Although the Town asserts five assignments of error, the 
first, relating to the appropriateness of mandamus as a remedy 
in these circumstances, is dispositive.  We therefore do not 
reach the remaining assignments of error and reserve for 
another day the substantive questions raised by the parties. 
 
5
 
Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy that may be used to 
compel a public official to perform a purely ministerial duty 
imposed by law.  In re: Horan, 271 Va. 258, 258, 634 S.E.2d 
675, 676 (2006).  The use of the remedy is limited.  It is not 
awarded as a matter of right but only in the exercise of a 
sound judicial discretion.  It is not awarded in a doubtful 
case.  It is not available where the applicant has an adequate 
remedy at law.  Hertz v. Times-World Corporation, 259 Va. 599, 
607-08, 528 S.E.2d 458, 462-63 (2000).  A significant 
limitation upon the use of mandamus is the requirement that 
the duty to be enforced must be one in which the public 
official must act as a matter of course, without the exercise 
of his own judgment or discretion.  Where the official duty 
involves the necessity on the part of the officer to make some 
investigation, to examine evidence and form his judgment 
thereon, mandamus will not be awarded to compel performance of 
the duty.  To do so would improperly transfer to the court the 
discretion the law has committed to the officer.  Richlands 
Medical Ass'n v. Commonwealth, 230 Va. 384, 386-87, 337 S.E.2d 
737, 739 (1985). 
 
Applying those principles, it is apparent that the 
decision to be made by the Town’s officials in deciding 
whether to accept the application involved considerable 
investigation of the submitted plans, the conditions existing 
 
6
on the subject land and in the surrounding area, and the 
exercise of discretion and judgment in applying the applicable 
statutes, ordinances and regulations to the conditions found 
to exist.   
 
The Town’s subdivision ordinance, at § 13-57(a), requires 
the Land Development Official to “conduct an initial review of 
the application and preliminary plat of the proposed 
subdivision for completeness and technical accuracy.”  That 
section further provides that applications that “are deemed to 
be incomplete shall not be accepted until the deficiencies 
have been properly addressed.”  The ordinance also provides, 
at § 13-62(b)(1):  “Unless a waiver is approved . . . all 
applications for preliminary plat approval shall be 
accompanied by the following information:  . . . . ((j)) Proof 
of any approved special exceptions, variances or waivers 
necessary for the subdivision.”  If no waivers have been 
requested by the applicant, the requests for them may 
accompany the application but must be noted on the plat.  
Centex requested no waivers because it took the position that 
none could lawfully be required.   
 
Thus, the Land Development Official was required to 
decide a mixed question of law and fact:  What, if any, 
waivers were required in consideration of the facts of the 
proposed subdivision, the conditions existing on the subject 
 
7
land and the neighboring lands, and the mandates of the 
applicable statutes, ordinances and regulations?   
 
Two examples will suffice to illustrate the nature of the 
questions confronting the Land Development Official:  (1) The 
Town took the position that driveways shown on the plat 
offended the Standards Manual by providing direct access into 
Mason’s Lane, a street having a traffic count of over 2000 
vehicles per day.  Centex argued that the ordinances forbade 
direct access only to “collector streets” and that Mason’s 
Lane was shown as a “local street” and not a “collector 
street” on the Town’s Comprehensive Plan.  (2) The Town took 
the position that the plat offended the ordinance by failing 
to accommodate Battlefield Parkway, a thoroughfare nearly 
completed on neighboring lands and planned to run through the 
proposed subdivision.  The plat showed homes to be built in 
the path of this street and failed to coordinate the 
subdivision’s internal streets with the proposed parkway.  
Centex argued that the Town could not lawfully or 
constitutionally require a subdivider to reserve or dedicate a 
right-of-way for planned public roads, the need for which is 
wholly unrelated to the development of the subdivider’s 
property.   
 
In order to determine whether the application was 
“incomplete” and contained “deficiencies,” the official was 
 
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required by § 13-62(b)(1)(j) of the ordinance to ascertain 
whether waivers were necessary as to these and the other 
disputes between the parties.  The official’s task was not 
purely ministerial.  It involved the application of law to a 
complex set of facts and required the exercise of judgment.  
It was therefore not subject to compulsion by mandamus. 
 
The present case differs from Board of Supervisors v. 
Hylton Enterprises, 216 Va. 582, 221 S.E.2d 534 (1976).  
There, we held that mandamus was the proper remedy to compel 
county officials to act on site plans that had been pending 
before them for over two years.  We held that the duty of the 
officials to take action within a reasonable time was purely 
ministerial, but we did not undertake to dictate what action 
they should take.  We agreed that the substance of their 
decision would lie within the officials’ discretion.  Id. at 
584, 221 S.E.2d at 536.  Here, the Town’s officials acted upon 
the Centex application promptly, by rejecting it within ten 
working days as required by the ordinance.  Centex complains 
not of their failure to act, but of the substance of their 
action and the reasons they gave to support it. 
 
In Hylton, we held that declaratory judgment was not an 
adequate remedy at law because it is unavailable “where [the] 
claims and rights asserted have fully matured, and the alleged 
wrongs have already been suffered.”  Id. at 585, 221 S.E.2d at 
 
9
537.  In that respect also, Hylton differs from the present 
case.  There, the developer had already suffered the wrong 
caused by the county officials’ unwarranted failure or refusal 
to act on his site plans for a two-year period, resulting in 
the expense and disruption caused by the delay.  Here, the 
claims and rights asserted by Centex have not matured, but 
remain to be resolved by judicial determination.  Neither 
Centex nor the Town has yet taken final action in reliance on 
their respective contentions.   
 
The purpose of the declaratory judgment statutes is to 
provide a mechanism for resolving uncertainty in controversies 
over legal rights, without requiring one party to invade the 
asserted rights of another in order to permit an ordinary 
civil action for damages.  Code § 8.01-191; Miller v. Highland 
County, 274 Va. 355, 370, 650 S.E.2d 532, 539 (2007) (this day 
decided); Hoffman Family, L.L.C. v. Mill Two Associates, 259 
Va. 685, 693, 529 S.E.2d 318, 323 (2000); Cupp v. Board of 
Supervisors, 227 Va. 580, 592, 318 S.E.2d 407, 413 (1984); 
Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Bishop, 211 Va. 414, 418, 177 
S.E.2d 519, 522 (1970).  We hold that in the circumstances of 
the present case declaratory judgment affords an adequate 
remedy.  The mixed questions of law and fact in controversy, 
as well as the resolution of the legal disputes between the 
parties, remain pending before the circuit court as the 
 
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subject of Centex’ still unresolved claim for declaratory 
judgment.  A declaratory judgment will decide those disputes 
and guide the parties in their future courses of action. 
Conclusion 
 
Because the circuit court erred in awarding mandamus, we 
will reverse the judgment appealed from and remand the case 
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
Reversed and remanded.