Opinion ID: 1467920
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Administrative Exhaustion Doctrine

Text: Alltel's remaining arguments regarding subject matter jurisdiction, justiciability, [9] failure to state a claim, and abstention all rest on the contention that Springfield failed to exhaust its administrative remedies. See Premium Standard Farms, Inc. v. Lincoln Twp. of Putnam County, 946 S.W.2d 234, 237 (Mo.1997) (en banc) (exhaustion of administrative remedies generally required before a court has jurisdiction unless the administrative remedy is not adequate or the controlling issue in the case is a pure legal issue). As the district court found, and as discussed above, Springfield's tax assessment and collection procedures do not provide an adequate remedy for determining whether the tax applies to the defendants. Although Alltel vigorously asserts that the administrative remedy for tax assessment and collection should be used to determine liability, the district court noted in City of Jefferson III that Alltel has refused to pay the tax and refused to file the information needed for Springfield to make a tax assessment. [10] See 2006 WL 3937243, at . Although Alltel's refusal to cooperate may not make the tax collection remedy impossible, it does highlight the inadequacy of those procedures, which would require a lengthy and expensive calculation of the tax owed before a legal determination is made whether the defendants are liable for the tax. Thus, we conclude that Springfield's administrative procedures for tax assessment and collection are not adequate to determine the issue of liability and do not represent an exclusive remedy on that issue. Furthermore, in the absence of any tax collection claim, no factual disputes remained, nor was the district court required to make any classifications or value determinations. [11] Instead, Springfield's request for a declaratory judgment presented the court with an issue of statutory interpretation. Such questions present pure legal issues and therefore satisfy an exception to the general exhaustion of remedies rule. Premium Std. Farms, 946 S.W.2d at 237-38 (permitting court to resolve a purely legal issue of whether a township had authority to impose certain regulations, even though the plaintiff had not sought a variance and therefore had not exhausted administrative remedies); City of Bridgeton v. City of St. Louis, 18 S.W.3d 107, 112 (Mo.Ct.App.2000) (question of whether zoning ordinance applied was question of law and therefore administrative remedies did not need to be exhausted before the court could determine immunity). Accordingly, we conclude that Springfield's claim for declaratory judgment satisfies at least one of the exceptions to the exhaustion doctrine. Thus, the district court had subject matter jurisdiction, the justiciability requirements are met, and the district court did not err in denying Alltel's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.