Court Opinion

ID: 9759435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:16:15.816568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:01.728508
License: Public Domain

*546BOIS, J.,
dissenting.
Planning boards are creatures of the legislature and it follows that the powers of such boards and the rights of the parties thereunder are necessarily limited by the provisions of RSA ch. 36 which authorizes planning boards. See Levasseur v. Board of Selectmen, 116 N.H. 340, 358 A.2d 665 (1976).
RSA 36:23 (Supp. 1977) reads in pertinent part as follows: “No plat shall be approved or disapproved by the planning board without affording a hearing thereon. The applicant and abutters shall be notified of said hearing... by certified or registered mail.” (Emphasis added.) “Any persons aggrieved by any decision of the planning board concerning a plat” may appeal the board’s decision to the superior court. RSA 36:34 I (Supp. 1977).
It is a well established rule that the intent of a “statute is determined from its construction as a whole and not by construing separately isolated words or phrases.” Piecuch v. City of Manchester, 114 N.H. 8, 11, 314 A.2d 642, 643-44 (1974). Applying that rule of construction, this court held in Hancock v. City of Concord, 114 N.H. 404, 322 A.2d 605 (1974), that there being no provision in RSA 36:23 for a public hearing, the “persons aggrieved” in RSA 36:34 were intended to be the applicant and the abutters who were required to be notified of a hearing. 114 N.H. at 407, 322 A.2d at 607.
This court also applied in Carter v. Nashua, 116 N.H. 466, 362 A.2d 191 (1976), another well established rule that re-enactment by the legislature of certain sections of a statute without change is deemed to be an adoption by it of their prior interpretation by this court. 116 N.H. at 468, 362 A.2d 193; Dover Housing Board v. Colbath, 106 N.H. 481, 483, 213 A.2d 923, 925 (1965). Although RSA 36:23 and RSA 36:34 were rephrased in certain respects by the legislature in 1975, it did not vary the meaning placed on them by this court in Hancock v. Carter. See also Laws 1979, 121:3.
The legislature in its wisdom need not, as contended by the majority opinion, define in the same manner “persons aggrieved” by a grant of a site plan by a planning board and “persons directly affected” seeking review of a grant of a variance or of a special exception by a zoning board of adjustment. In view of the history of these sections, we see no reason for this court to vary the interpretation it previously placed on these sections which was acquiesced in by the legislature.
Furthermore, the holding by the majority opinion that “aggrieved parties” should be defined “on a case to case basis” will necessarily render uncertain what the legislature has chosen to designate with certainty in the statute.
LAMPRON, C.J., concurs in the dissent.