Court Opinion

ID: 9793376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:46:34.987627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:04:39.335267
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
There are in the Court’s opinion two statements which shed a visible ray of hope, and with which for that reason I am in agreement. I point to the statement that “Agins is not necessarily binding as to our interpretation of the Idaho Constitution, which likewise forbids a taking of property without the paying of just compensation therefor.” The author of the statement alludes to a situation where there is “the economic destruction or devaluation of property by the enactment of zoning and land use ordinances after the acquisition of the property by the complaining owner
I am impressed by and point to the statement further on at the end of the Court’s opinion which, to my mind at least, expresses some consternation and perhaps disapproval of a staff member employed by a planning and zoning commission having usurped political power in taking an appeal to challenge that commission’s determination.
The Court’s opinion reads well and is perhaps unasssailable on its content other than, beyond giving mention to the fact that the Henrys base their cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, does not to my mind disclose that their right to maintain an action under that Act is fully considered. My own reading of the Henrys’ brief discloses that they have anticipatorily conceded every major point discussed by the majority opinion as being roadblocks, but con*268tend that that statute gives them a right of action. I am not persuaded that the Henrys are incorrect and only wish that the entire court membership had more time to put into this important case. For instance, the Henrys seemingly concede that Tiburón acts against them, but point to San Diego Gas as opening the doors to their action. Yet in the Court’s opinion, although it cites San Diego Gas for application of the fifth amendment through the fourteenth, not again mentioned.
If one remembers that the Henrys once had the certificate which represented the end of their problems, and then had it snatched away because a disgruntled employee of the planning and zoning commission took it upon himself to take an appeal, and if one accepts that the employee had no right to appeal, an appellate court seeking to rectify the injustice so done might not necessarily hold itself precluded from doing so.
It is said in the Court’s opinion, however, that they did not appeal further and are now precluded by the doctrine of res judicata — it being further said that an examination of the propriety of the appeal by a staff member would be to “countenance a collateral attack on the finality of that decision.” Such reasoning and application of principles of collateral estoppel/res judicata would once have had merit. But there is no merit since the Court just two weeks ago cast those doctrines aside. Duthie v. Lewiston Gun Club, 104 Idaho 751, 663 P.2d 287 (1983). As counsel recently remarked at oral argument in another case, Ada County Highway District v. Magwire, 104 Idaho 656, 662 P.2d 237 (1983), this Court can do and has done anything it wants to do. There is, however, nothing which now prevents this Court from considering that issue raised by the Henrys, and if the Court deigns to do so it can invalidate that improper appeal and bring about reinstatement of the certification that the planning and zoning commission concluded the Henry’s were entitled to.
Compelling reasons are present for so doing. It is a strange West which we now have where a man of industrious nature is by a bureaucratic ordinance deprived of the right to build his own house on a ten-acre tract. And for what reason? Because it has been thought better that the law should be that a single dwelling be not erected on less than 80 acres! The proposition is basically .so monstrous as to be undeserving of further comment.
In conclusion, I submit that, time permitting, the Court might very well determine that exhaustion of administrative remedies is not a prerequisite to a § 1983 action. If that were so, it is difficult indeed to see how a successful § 1983 action could ever be maintained. On the other hand, it is because administrative procedures have been used in derogation of civil rights that gives rise to a § 1983 claim. It would not seem that a person believing himself kicked about by local authority must submit to further trampling on his rights before he can seek relief elsewhere.
ON DENIAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING