Opinion ID: 2543820
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Form of Service

Text: ¶ 13 The plain language of section 27-12-102.4 is unambiguous in regard to the form of service mandated by the provision's notice requirement. The section clearly indicates that a county proposing to vacate its interests in a road must provide both notice to the public through a newspaper publication or through posting and notice to landowners directly affected by the proposal through the mail. In pertinent part, the section states that notice shall be given by publishing in a newspaper . . . , or, where no newspaper is published ... by posting the notice in three public places ..., and by mailing such notice to all owners of record .... Id. § 27-12-102.4. An application of elementary rules of punctuation and grammar further bolsters this reading of section 27-12-102.4. Newspaper Agency Corp. v. Auditing Div. of Utah State Tax Comm'n, 938 P.2d 266, 271 (Utah 1997). Although courts need not always consider punctuation to discern legislative intent, courts should not arbitrarily ignore punctuation, but [should] give it due consideration and effect where it may be used as an aid to ascertain the legislature's purpose. Bd. of Educ. v. Hanchett, 50 Utah 289, 293, 167 P. 686, 687 (1917); see also, e.g., Elliot Coal Mining Co. v. Dir., Office of Workers' Comp. Programs, 17 F.3d 616, 629-30 (3d Cir.1994) ([T]he presence of a comma before the last clause in the statute suggests that the limiting clause applies to the entire series.). Here, the legislature's inclusion of commas both before and after the phrase where no newspaper is published ... by posting the notice in three public places serves to separate that clause from the preceding notice by publication and the subsequent notice by mail clauses. Utah Code Ann. § 27-12-102.4. In doing so, the legislature has set the notice by posting clause apart from the others, and thus, clarified that notice by posting is merely an alternative to notice by publication when publication is unavailable, while mailed notice is required in all cases. ¶ 14 Indeed, construing section 27-12-102.4 as allowing either notice by publication or notice by posting and notice by mail would nullify one statutory provision at the expense of preserving, at best, an alternate reading of another. Section 27-12-102.3 of the road abandonment statute exempts counties from the requirements of section 27-12-102.4 under the narrow circumstance where the landowners abutting the road proposed to be vacated unanimously consent in writing to the vacation. Id. § 27-12-102.3. If section 27-12-102.4 were construed as not requiring counties to mail notice to abutting landowners, however, the consent exemption of section 27-12-102.3 would become superfluous, since a county could vacate its interests in a road without ever specifically noticing those abutting landowners. Not only would such a construction place undueand legislatively unanticipatedfaith in the ability of the smallest of notices in a region's newspaper to reach the widest of audiences, but it would violate our fundamental duty to give effect to every provision of a statute. Madsen v. Borthick, 769 P.2d 245, 252 n. 11 (Utah 1988); see also Hall, 2001 UT 34 at ¶¶ 15, 18, 24 P.3d 958; Platts, 947 P.2d at 662. ¶ 15 Accordingly, we hold that the district court erred by ruling section 27-12-102.4 did not require that written notice be provided to the abutting landowners because the County had published notice in the Transcript-Bulletin. Rather, at the time the County proposed to vacate West Stansbury Road, the statute clearly required that counties provide both (1) public notice through publication or posting and (2) private notice via mail to abutting landowners.