Court Opinion

ID: 9549601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:22:04.372286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:36.547458
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
with whom ERWIN, Justice, joins concurring.
While I agree with the court’s disposition of this matter, I disagree with the court’s treatment of the “capacity to be assessed” issue. The majority reasons that since the Board of Adjustment was accorded full party status in Munroe v. City Council for City of Anchorage, 545 P.2d 165, reh’g granted and opinion modified, 547 P.2d 839 (Alaska 1976), it is capable of full party status in the instant case and has the capacity to be assessed attorney’s fees. I think it is necessary to examine those factors which set a zoning board apart from other quasi-judicial administrative boards and thus compel the decision that the zoning board in the case at bar should be assessed attorney’s fees.
Many quasi-judicial administrative boards, such as the Workmen’s Compensation Board, are charged with adjudicating the rights of individual parties according to the terms of administrative law. However, the zoning board’s duties go far beyond determining the relative rights of the parties in quasi-judicial proceedings; the zoning board is granted a large degree of discretion to be exercised in the public interest. That discretion is particularly obvious in cases such as the one at bar where a party is seeking a variance or special exception to a zoning ordinance.1 The exercise of the zoning board’s discretionary authority may seemingly involve only a few individuals, but the impact of its decision may be felt by the entire community. In explaining its decision that the zoning board involved had sufficient party status to maintain an appeal from a lower court reversal of its decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court stated:
In some appeals from administrative boards the question at issue is of consequence only to certain parties who will be directly affected, as, for example, where the public utilities commission is called upon to apportion between a municipality and a railway company the cost of the construction of a highway bridge over a railway track. ... In other cases, however, there is a definite public interest to be protected. This is true, for instance, of many orders of the public utilities commission, and is particularly true with respect to zoning regulations. . While [zoning] boards have ordinarily no corporate existence as such but are merely agencies of the municipality, and while they have no direct interest in this litigation, it would be a logical conclusion that because of the function they perform they should represent the public interest entrusted to them in ap*995peals taken from their decisions.2 (citation omitted)
Representing the public interest in appeals from its decisions may often imply justifying its decision. Because of the extent of its discretion, the zoning board has a far greater interest in attempting to uphold its decision than does a quasi-judicial administrative body like the Workmen’s Compensation Board and thus should be granted full party status. Given these factors, I conclude that it is appropriate for the zoning board to be accorded full party status and assessed attorney’s fees in the instant case.

. In explaining the difference between the discretion exercised by an administrative agency in promulgating rules and adjudicating rights, one commentator has noted that when an agency is adjudicating rights, the discretionary power is more subtle.
[A]gencies engaged in adjudication may be enabled to exercise their discretionary powers to reach results which go far beyond, and which may even be quite at odds with the underlying legislative purpose. It is not meant to imply that agencies always stretch the legislative fabric. However, the freedom to exercise discretion in deciding individual cases on a basis of ad hoc adjudication may enable them at times to read new and unanticipated meanings into legislative language, when the agency heads feel that the accomplishment of their broad social purposes will be furthered thereby.
1. F. Cooper, State Administrative Law 33 (1965).
The potential for variance from the stated purpose is even greater in situations like the "one at bar where a board is being requested to grant special exceptions to particular parties. In such circumstances it is appropriate to grant the board full party status and, when its decision is not upheld, to grant an award of attorney’s fees against it.

.Rommeli v. Walsh, 127 Conn. 16, 15 A.2d 6, 9 (1940). Accord, Zimmerman v. Kramer, 29 Misc.2d 413, 217 N.Y.S.2d 438 (Sup.Ct.1961); Board of Adjustment v. Stovall, 147 Tex. 366, 216 S.W.2d 171 (1949). See generally Simpson v. Kennedy, 327 A.2d 763 (Del.Super.1974); Boyd & Usher Transport v. Southern Tank Lines, Inc., 320 S.W.2d 120 (Ky.1959).