Opinion ID: 1058511
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Agent's Application of Subdivision Ordinance

Text: The defendants argue as a matter of cross-error that Logan did not have a right to file a declaratory judgment action challenging Townsend's application of the Subdivision Ordinance in granting exceptions for the Wilton subdivision. According to the defendants, our holdings in Shilling v. Jimenez, 268 Va. 202, 597 S.E.2d 206 (2004), and Miller v. Highland County, 274 Va. 355, 650 S.E.2d 532 (2007), require that we dismiss this portion of Logan's appeal. In response, Logan asserts that the Declaratory Judgment Act, Code §§ 8.01-184 through -191, permits her present challenge to Townsend's application of the Subdivision Ordinance. Logan contends that her case may be distinguished from the proceedings in Shilling, which did not include the locality as a party defendant but involved a neighboring landowner's suit against an adjoining property owner. Logan further maintains that our decision in Shilling is not controlling because in that case, we did not address a subdivision agent's interpretation of an ordinance or an agent's allegedly arbitrary and capricious actions granting exceptions to that ordinance. We disagree with Logan's arguments. In Shilling, we considered the issue whether the declaratory judgment statutes may be used to maintain a third-party challenge to a government action when such challenge is not authorized by statute. The complainants in Shilling filed a declaratory judgment action requesting that a circuit court declare void the creation of a certain family subdivision approved under an ordinance allowing conveyances to members of a landowner's immediate family. 268 Va. at 205-06, 597 S.E.2d at 208. The neighboring landowners alleged that local officials wrongfully approved the subdivision based on factual misrepresentations made by the applicant. Id. The defendants filed demurrers alleging that the local governing body was the sole entity authorized to enforce the ordinance, and that the complainants could not seek to enforce the ordinance provisions by employing the remedy of declaratory judgment. The circuit court sustained the demurrers and dismissed the bill of complaint with prejudice. Id. at 206, 597 S.E.2d at 208. We affirmed the circuit court's judgment, holding that the complainants, who were strangers to the subdivision approval process, did not have a third-party right of action to enforce the locality's application of its subdivision ordinance in a declaratory judgment suit, because no statute granted third parties this right. Id. at 208, 597 S.E.2d at 209-10. Three years after our decision in Shilling, we were asked in Miller to consider the complainants' attempted use of the declaratory judgment statutes to challenge a planning commission's determination that that a conditional use permit was in substantial accord with the locality's comprehensive plan. 274 Va. at 368-69, 650 S.E.2d at 538; see also Code § 15.2-2232. We held that the complainants failed to assert a valid request for declaratory relief because no statute specifically authorized such a right of action. Miller, 274 Va. at 371-72, 650 S.E.2d at 540. We explained that the purpose of the declaratory judgment statutes is to provide a mechanism for obtaining preventive relief to resolve controversies involving legal rights, without requiring one party to invade the asserted rights of another in order to allow an ordinary civil action for damages. Miller, 274 Va. at 370, 650 S.E.2d at 539; Hoffman Family, L.L.C. v. Mill Two Assocs. P'ship, 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). We emphasized that our declaratory judgment statutes do not create or alter any substantive rights, or bring any other additional rights into being. Miller, 274 Va. at 370, 650 S.E.2d at 539; accord Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Bishop, 211 Va. 414, 419, 177 S.E.2d 519, 522 (1970). We conclude that the holdings in Shilling and Miller require dismissal of the part of Logan's appeal challenging Townsend's application of the Subdivision Ordinance to the proposed Wilton subdivision. Like the complainants in those two cases, Logan has attempted to use the declaratory judgment statutes to create a right of appeal to the circuit courts that does not otherwise exist. Because the declaratory judgment statutes do not create such rights, and in the absence of statutory authority granting her a right of appeal to actions taken under the Subdivision Ordinance, Logan remained a stranger to the subdivision approval process and was not authorized to challenge Townsend's actions under that Ordinance. [7] Therefore, we hold that the circuit court erred in concluding that Logan had a third-party right of action to challenge the City's approval of the Wilton subdivision plat, and that this part of Logan's appeal must be dismissed.