Opinion ID: 1930264
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Extent of the Record

Text: Appellants, contending that the Board's orders were not supported by substantial evidence on the whole record, argue as a preliminary matter that the only evidence in the record, and thus that the only evidence to which a reviewing court can look for support of the Board's conclusions, is the evidence presented during or before the Board's hearing of June 13, 1981. In other words, they claim that the Ballew letter, presented to the Board during the reconsideration process, may not be relied upon as evidence in support of the Board's ultimate decision. We disagree. The record upon which the Board may legitimately base a decision is not ordinarily confined to testimony or exhibits formally admitted at a full-scale trial-type hearing. 38 M.R.S.A. § 344(5), which governs the reconsideration process, states that upon receipt of a petition for reconsideration the Board may grant the petition in full or in part, order a public hearing or dismiss the petition, thus indicating that the petition may be granted or dismissed without any live evidentiary hearing. If the Board elects to proceed without such a hearing, it may nonetheless base its decision on information submitted along with the petition and made a part of the record in that manner. Cf. In re Belgrade Shores, Inc., 371 A.2d 413, 416 (Me.1977) (where Board held no hearing before approving Belgrade's site permit application, appellate court must look to information submitted with Belgrade's application and reasonable inferences drawn therefrom when reviewing Board decision to determine whether it was based upon substantial evidence on the whole record). By the same token, the Board is free to consider documentary evidence, such as the Ballew letter, submitted in response to the petition for reconsideration. Furthermore, petitioners at no time in connection with their petition for reconsideration requested a trial-type hearing at which the new documentary evidence already presented by themselves and by Hannaford could be formally introduced through live witnesses and at which those witnesses could be subjected to cross-examination. On the contrary, the petitioners participated before the Board in the reconsideration proceeding in which all parties, as well as the Board, apparently took as a given the fact that both the Altenburg and the Ballew letters had already been added to the record to be considered by the Board. They now are in no position to argue that the Board could not depend upon the Ballew letter to support its order of January 13, 1982, as they themselves rely heavily on the Altenburg letterwhich, like the Ballew letter, was submitted to the Board after its decision of October 28, 1981, and was never cross-examined [4] to support their claim that the Board's second order was not supported by substantial evidence on the whole record. This court held in Warren v. Waterville Urban Renewal Authority, 235 A.2d 295, 299 (Me.1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 1006, 88 S.Ct. 1249, 20 L.Ed.2d 105 (1968), that [a] party cannot claim aggrievement from trial conduct which he actively seconded or tacitly tolerated. Just so, appellants may not now complain about the Board's approach to documentary evidence, when they themselves have accepted the benefits of that approach. We do not intend to imply here that the Board's October 28, 1981, findings were not supported by the evidence before the Board on that date, or even that the Board's January 13, 1982, findings would not have been supported by the evidence presented prior to the filing of appellants' reconsideration petition. We are simply pointing out that we need not confine ourselves to the pre-reconsideration evidence in reviewing the two orders. The Board may properly base a reconsideration decision under section 344(5) upon documentary evidence submitted by interested parties both in favor of and opposed to the petition for reconsiderationat least where, as here, the present complaining parties never made a request for a trial-type evidentiary hearing, but rather argued their case on the basis of the newly presented documentary materials.