Court Opinion

ID: 9670827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:26:48.883252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:06.732723
License: Public Domain

SCHUDSON, J.
{concurring). The significance of footnote 4 of our decision merits added emphasis.
Essentially, Tuckaway claims that the City employed improperly motivated pretexts to postpone and deny its application. The City responds that it provided the required hearings, followed the correct procedures, rendered a legally tenable denial and, therefore, that Tuckaway has no cause of action for intentional denial of due process.
If, however, the City never intended to provide a decision on the merits and, as a result, its hearings and procedures were a sham, then neither formal compli-*284anee with procedures nor theoretical tenability of a denial would make any difference. The trial court was correct in allowing Tuckaway to pursue that theory.
Therefore, if the trial court, in its summary judgments, had foreclosed Tuckaway's opportunity to attempt to prove that the City's procedures were pretextual and its decision-making process a sham, my conclusion in this case would have changed. Because, however, despite some troubling ambiguity in the reach of the summary judgments and the range of the resulting court trial, it appears that the trial court permitted Tuckaway to pursue its theory, and because, in footnote 4, we have recognized the viability of such a claim, I concur.