Court Opinion

ID: 9756879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:06:08.448061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:32.433616
License: Public Domain

CATHELL, Judge,
dissenting.
In this case, I respectfully suggest that the majority has attempted to make any comment, belated statement, or subsequent response by a zoning administrator in relation to the prior issuance of a building permit an appealable event. An event which, given the process the majority adopts, revives the appeal period with respect to the issuance of the permit itself. As I see it, and as I believe the law has generally perceived it, an administrative appeal period commences to run from the time of the issuance or denial of a building permit. Once the appeal period has passed, administrative finality occurs. At that point, insofar as the administrative process is concerned, the permit issued is administratively valid,1 and, if denied, is administratively conclusive. In other words, the issue is administratively dead.
*84What the majority has done is adopt a rule of resurrection or resuscitation which, I submit, effectively destroys any concept of administrative finality and furnishes to anti-developmental interests in this State a weapon that can be used to reopen and relitigate any issues relating to development. Though the majority does not now explicitly state that actual notice and public hearings are necessary before the issuance of a building permit in order for administrative finality to attach to its issuance (after the appropriate appeal period), that is the practical effect of its decision.
In the case sub judice, after the appeal period had expired from the actual issuance of the permit, Mr. Hupfer informed the Zoning Administrator that he believed that a special exception was needed to operate the facility being constructed. The Zoning Administrator responded, in essence, that he stood by his original decision. “I am more convinced than ever____” (Emphasis added.) It is absolutely clear to me that the Zoning Administrator merely reaffirmed his original decision. The majority, however it couches its language, in essence holds that the time to appeal the issuance of a building permit commences when a Zoning Administrator responds to an objection to its issuance, rather than from its issuance. If Mr. Hupfer had delayed making his complaint for six months, six years or sixty years, under the majority holding the time to appeal the building permit could still be revived.
Under the circumstances of this, case, appellees’ remedy, as I perceive it, was to institute an action attempting to restrain the construction. In such an action, all defenses, including equitable defenses — laches, waiver, estoppel, etc. — could be more fully explored.2 Under the majority’s holding, there can never be administrative finality with regard to the issuance of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of permits issued over the years.
*85One of the cases relied on by the majority in support of its decision is Harford County v. Preston, 322 Md. 493, 588 A.2d 772 (1991). It involved a timely appeal from the denial of a special exception and was ultimately remanded for the agency to make sufficient findings of fact. It was primarily a Schultz v. Pritts case.3 Preston is cited in the case at bar for the proposition that a Board of Appeals has “substantive jurisdiction to review a final administrative or adjudicatory determination by the Zoning Administrator____” Though I fail to find that holding in Preston,4 I agree that it correctly states the law. I disagree that every time an administrator reiterates his or her original decision that the prior decision becomes interlocutory and the reiteration of the original decision becomes the new final determination — ad infinitum. That is the logical result of the majority holding.
Four other cases cited by the majority for the holding it espouses are: Permanent Fin. Corp. v. Montgomery County, 308 Md. 239, 518 A.2d 123 (1986); City of Hagerstown v. Long Meadow Shopping Center, 264 Md. 481, 287 A.2d 242 (1972); Berwyn Heights v. Rogers, 228 Md. 271, 179 A.2d 712 (1962) and Lipsitz v. Parr, 164 Md. 222, 164 A. 743 (1933). These cases were actually offered earlier in the majority opinion to support the general position that permits can be rescinded. I take no issue with that part of the majority’s opinion so long as it is a proper case in an appropriate proceeding. The instant case, I submit is neither proper nor appropriate. The majority offers no case law to support that portion of its opinion to which I dissent.
Lipsitz and Berwyn Heights were both equitable actions. Lipsitz was brought to restrain governmental officials from *86interfering with an issued permit, and Berwyn Heights to enjoin the construction of a dwelling. In the instant case, the appellees chose not to file an action for equitable restraints but, by raising a subsequent administrative complaint, attempted to appeal a prior routine zoning interpretation that had resulted in the issuance of a building permit. Both City of Hagerstown and Permanent Financial involved timely appeals by applicants from the denial of building permits, not untimely appeals by non-parties from the issuance of a building permit.5 Lipsitz, Berwyn Heights, City of Hagerstown, and Permanent Financial are examples of how issues such as those in the case at bar are traditionally resolved. Rather than supporting the procedural posture taken by the majority, they are examples of how these issues should be raised, and, I respectfully suggest, offer no support for the majority’s position.
The majority’s position indicates an indifference to which administrative event is the appealable event. Under the majority’s holding, the time of the issuance of a permit is immaterial. The issuance of the permit is never final for appeal purposes so long as any person thereafter chooses to complain about the zoning interpretation that supports the permit’s issuance. Under the reasoning given, the time for appeal does not start to run as to any party who might be interested until he or she writes a letter asking what has happened and receives a reply. In the present case, it was at least two to three months after the commencement of construction and the issuance of the permit. Had Mr. Hupfer wintered in Florida, it could have easily been several months. If he was in the military service stationed overseas, it could have been years. The scenarios are infinite.
With the decision of the majority on this point, I fear that great economic damage will result, not only to UPS (which *87may or may not deserve it) but in a general sense as well. Construction lenders, permanent financial entities, title insurance companies, and the like can never be protected by the finality of the administrative process. The issuance of the building permits and sometimes the termination of the period of appeal dating from their issuance start the flow of financing that fuels the developmental industry. The land acquisition funding, the first and subsequent construction draws, the ultimate permanent financing — all rely on the issuance of the permit and the appeal period arising therefrom.
It is important to note that the case sub judice did not, originally, at the administrative level, involve an application for a variance, change of zoning, conditional use, special exception, change of zoning maps, comprehensive rezoning or the like — areas that traditionally require notice and public hearings. Appellant simply applied for and received a building permit. If, as the majority suggests, the issuance of a building permit requires actual notice — to whom? If, in order to insure administrative finality, every building permit must first be subject to a public hearing, where are the tens of thousands of hearings to be held? If notices and hearings are required prior to the mere issuance of a permit, why differentiate in zoning codes between permitted uses and other uses? If an interpretation of a zoning administrator is not final until the last person to know of it knows of it, how can it ever be final?
The majority finds it troublesome that the process UPS followed to obtain a determination from the administrator that no special exception was required “is entirely private.” What I presume the majority to mean is that it was not done at a public hearing. The record reflects that the approach taken by UPS is virtually the same as that taken by every applicant. There is no indication in the record that it was done behind closed doors or that the records of the approval were in any way concealed. As far as the record before us is concerned, all evidence of contacts between UPS and the zoning office were at all times part of the *88public zoning records of Baltimore County, fully available for review at any time by any member of the public— including Mr. Hupfer. In this case, as in virtually every case of zoning sign-offs, the record was available to the public. It was not kept private. In an administrative context, there was no more of a requirement in this case for public notice than in any other application for a building permit. If public notice and/or public hearings were required in this case in respect to the administrator’s original interpretation that the use was permitted, then public notice and hearings are required in every case.
The majority also states: “The administrator is not empowered to change ... the county zoning law, and if his conclusion ... is incorrect, there must be the ability ... of ... aggrieved persons to challenge it when ... discovered.” I agree. Equity is already available. To reopen the administrative process is to create a new remedy — one never before used.6 I suggest that, absent clear and unambiguous legislative direction, or direction from the Court of Appeals, the creation of a new remedy is as unwise as it is unnecessary, especially considering the basic proposition that zoning is a deprivation of or interference with otherwise protected common-law property rights.7
*89I conclude by suggesting that appellees here should be left to their equitable remedies, if any now remain. To answer appellees’ complaint by expanding the concept of appealability and destroying the concept of administrative finality as the majority has done is, I believe, fraught with great potential for economic mischief. More importantly, it is, I believe, wrong.

. Administrative finality would not foreclose the subsequent filing of equitable actions.

. Iam unaware of any case in which the appellate courts of Maryland have recognized that a complete range of equitable defenses are available in the administrative appeal process.

. 291 Md. 1, 11-12, 432 A.2d 1319 (1981). As relevant in Preston, Schultz requires an agency to determine whether adverse impact is sufficiently site selective so as to justify a denied of a special exception given the presumption that special exceptions are generally compatible with the district in which they are permitted.

. The court presumed “without deciding" that the county had certain powers.

. The majority has not directed our attention to any cases involving an appeal by a non-applicant from the routine issuance to another of a building permit.

. The provisions of the Baltimore County Code are not unique. They are contained in many zoning codes. The majority directs us to no cases employing the remedy it adopts. I have found none.

. The Court of Appeals in Aspen Hill Venture v. Montgomery County Council, 265 Md. 303, 313-14, 289 A.2d 303 (1972), when discussing the balancing of the rights of the property owner versus the public welfare, quoting from Landay v. Board of Zoning Appeals, 173 Md. 460, 466, 196 A. 293 (1938), said:
Such ordinances [zoning ordinances] are in derogation of the common law right to so use private property as to realize its highest utility, and while they should be liberally construed to accomplish their plain purpose and intent, they should not be extended by implication to cases not clearly within the scope of the purpose and intent manifest in their language. [Emphasis added, brackets in original, citation omitted.]
See also County Comm’rs v. Zent, 86 Md.App. 745, 751, 587 A.2d 1205 (1991).