Court Opinion

ID: 9578534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:46:08.551951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:20.509653
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
I am unable to agree with a central underpinning of the majority’s opinion. More particularly, I find I cannot accept the conclusion that appellants were parties to the administrative proceedings in question in this case.
AS 44.62.640(b)(4) defines “party” as including
the agency, the respondent, and a person, other than an officer or employee of the agency in his official capacity, who has been allowed to appear in the proceeding.
In the case at bar appellants’ only significant contacts with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board were letters which were sent to the Board opposing the application of White Enterprises, Inc. and appellants’ appearance at the Board’s May 25,1977, meeting at which they voiced their objections to the issuance of a license. Given that this is the full extent of appellants’ participation in the proceedings, I am not persuaded that such contacts invested them with “party” status. It follows that I am therefore in agreement with the state’s position that appellants do not have the right to obtain judicial review of the Board’s decision by the procedural mechanism of an appeal pursuant to Appellate Rule 45.
Nevertheless, I concur in the majority’s reversal of the judgment of the superior court, since I am of the further view that the superior court should have treated the appeal as a claim for declaratory relief rather than dismissing the appeal outright.1

. See generally AS 22.10.020(b); City of Homer v. State, Dept’t of Natural Res., 566 P.2d 1314 (Alaska 1977); State v. Lewis, 559 P.2d 630 (Alaska 1977); Moore v. State, 553 P.2d 8 (Alaska 1976); State v. Aleut Corp., 541 P.2d 730 (Alaska 1975).