Opinion ID: 1057895
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Action in the Trial Court

Text: In 2003, the Plaintiffs, all of whom own property near the Jackson tract, filed this declaratory judgment action in an effort to determine the propriety of the expansion. The Defendants include Loveless, the Jacksons, and Nancy Allen, who, as Mayor of Rutherford County, was joined in an official capacity. The Plaintiffs alleged, among other things, that the 1992 reclassification violated the Rutherford County Zoning Resolution and that the 1992 notice of hearing violated the requirements of Tennessee Code Annotated section 13-7-105. The Defendants filed motions to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12.02, Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure, claiming protection by the sixty-day statute of limitations under Tennessee Code Annotated sections 27-9-101, -102 (2000), the one-year statute of limitations under Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-3-104 (2000), and the ten-year statute of limitations contained in Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-3-110 (2000). The Defendants also maintained that their reliance on the validity of the ordinance, coupled with the passage of time, qualified as a defense to an attack based upon procedural deficiencies. The Defendants further contended that the Plaintiffs had notice that Loveless was using more than ten acres as early as 2000 and stressed that the Plaintiffs had delayed filing suit for well over a year after the county planner informed them in 2002 that ninety acres of the property, rather than ten, had been rezoned. In a catch-all paragraph in Defendant Allen's motion, the following additional defenses were asserted: (1) failure to join indispensable parties, (2) acquiescence, (3) waiver, (4) estoppel, (5) laches, (6) failure to file an administrative appeal, (7) failure to mitigate, (8) lack of special injury, and (9) coming to a nuisance. In their motions to dismiss, the Jacksons and Loveless adopted and incorporated Allen's motion. In response, the Plaintiffs insisted that the statute of limitations was tolled until they received actual notice of the action by the county board and contended that their suit was not barred even though it was filed more than ten years after the reclassification. The Plaintiffs argued that they did not know and could not have reasonably discovered that the board of commission had rezoned ninety acres instead of the ten-acre tract until Loveless initiated his plan to expand the size of the gun range beyond the original ten-acre parcel and the county planner expressed the view that the expansion was lawful. The Plaintiffs asserted that they had reasonably relied upon the newspaper notice which provided that only ten acres of the Jacksons' 108 acres would be used for the gun range. In addition, the Plaintiffs contended that no statute of limitations can prevent them from seeking a declaratory judgment as to the validity of the zoning amendment, which because of its ineffective notice, is not only invalid now but was invalid from its inception. After the hearing on the motions to dismiss, the chancellor concluded that the suit was filed after the ten-year statute of limitations, the longest possible period as set out in Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-3-110 (2000). In consequence and without specifically determining which period of limitations applied, the chancellor ruled that the time within which to file the suit had not been tolled under the terms of any discovery rule because the decision of the County body was in fact the subject of public record. The motions to dismiss were granted and the board of commission was excused from compliance with Tennessee Code Annotated section 13-7-105, which establishes the procedure by which zoning ordinances must be amended.