Opinion ID: 2169216
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did the Board Act Without According Procedural Due Process?

Text: The presiding Justice concluded, as a matter of law, that It was a denial of due process for the Board of Environmental Protection to reach its decision [sic [13] ] on evidence not in the record which [Ethyl] had no opportunity to examine or analyze, explain or rebut. As we have pointed out, the Board was not required by statute to hold any hearings or to make a record. This last-quoted statement from the court's order indicates that the presiding Justice may nevertheless have reasoned that the Board's procedure was constitutionally defective under the Maine or the federal due process clauses, Constitution of the State of Maine, Art. I, § 6-A, and Constitution of the United States, Amend. XIV, § 1, respectively. Due process is a flexible concept which entails no particular form of procedure. In re Maine Clean Fuels, Inc., Me., 310 A.2d 736, 746 (1973); State v. Johnson, Me., 265 A.2d 711, 714 (1970). The court's finding that It was a denial of due process for the Board of Environmental Protection to reach its decision on evidence not in the record . . . may be readily put to rest. If, as we have shown, the Board was not required by law to make a record of its proceedings, and if accordingly none was made, the Board cannot be reproached  on constitutional or other grounds  for going outside the record in making its decisions. Since there was no record, there is simply no basis for the court's assertion that the Board reached its decisions on evidence not in the record. The court's conclusion that Ethyl's due process rights were violated by the absence of a record rests on the misconception that a record was otherwise legally mandated. We thus have no need to consider whether a record was independently required by the dictates of due process. The court's statement that the Board's decisions were based on evidence. . . which [Ethyl] had no opportunity to examine or analyze, explain or rebut, implies that the Justice was of the opinion that Ethyl was constitutionally entitled to a hearing before the Board. We disagree. Where, as in this case, there is no opportunity for a hearing before the administrative agency itself, due process is nevertheless satisfied by the availability of a hearing  in the form of a trial  in the course of judicial review. Bourjois, Inc. v. Chapman, 301 U.S. 183, 189, 57 S.Ct. 691, 695, 81 L.Ed. 1027 (1937); see 1 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 7.10 (1958); 16A C.J.S. Constitutional Law § 628b(1) (1956), and cases cited therein. The fact that Ethyl was able, by reason of 38 M.R. S.A. § 415, to obtain judicial review of the Board's denials of its applications vitiates any suggestion that, because there were no hearings before the Board, Ethyl was deprived of its procedural rights under the Maine and United States constitutions. We hold that the court erred in its determination that Ethyl's due process rights were violated by the Board's procedure in this case.