Opinion ID: 1967792
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Board Acted Arbitrarily and Capriciously by Denying a Building Permit to Mill Realty in Contravention of Its Practice of Granting Permits in Similar Situations

Text: The board also acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it rejected Mill Realty's application despite its practice of granting permits for the construction of single-family dwellings served by private wells on lots that did not conform to the ordinance's area requirements. Competent evidence showed that the board treated Mill Realty differently from other similarly-situated developers for no rational reason after Mill Realty successfully sued the town to avoid having to construct an unreasonably expensive access road to its property. For example, Mill Realty introduced into the record building permits for applications submitted by other developers with respect to lots that did not satisfy the dimensional requirements for using a private well instead of the public water supply. Mill Realty then introduced a memorandum from a town official explaining that the town issues building permits regardless of lot size when public water is unavailable. Ostensibly, then, this memorandum reflects the town's practice, despite the absence of any guidelines or standards stating when the town should deem public water available or unavailable. By denying Mill Realty's application because it deemed that public water was available to the property, the building official acted arbitrarily and capriciously, as did the board in affirming that denial. See Tillotson v. City Council of Cranston, 61 R.I. 293, 295, 200 A. 767, 768 (1938) (labeling as arbitrary and unreasonable city council decision not based on any rule or standard); see also MC. & S. Realty, Inc., 86 R.I. at 182, 133 A.2d at 766. From all that appears in the record, the building official granted some building permits and denied others in the absence of any rational rule or standards for doing so with respect to substandard lots of record; instead, by their own admission, both the building official and the board appeared to condition their approval of building permits for substandard lots of record on whether they deemed access to public water was available to the property. But because there were no guidelines for the building official or the board to rely on in making this determination, any decisions made on this basis necessarily were arbitrary and capricious. See Tillotson, 61 R.I. at 295, 200 A. at 768. In addition, the board's decision may also amount to a violation of the equal-protection clause of Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. For example, in 2000, the United States Supreme Court held that a homeowner could proceed on an equal-protection claim when a town unreasonably conditioned the homeowner's act of connecting to the municipal water supply on the homeowner's granting the town a thirty-three-foot easement, even though it required only a fifteen-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners. Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 565, 120 S.Ct. 1073, 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000) (per curiam). Here, the town unreasonably conditioned a building permit on Mill Realty's obtaining a variance or connecting the property to the public water supply when it granted building permits to other properties that were similarly situated as this property without first requiring the owners of those properties to obtain a variance or to connect to the public water supply.