Court Opinion

ID: 9442535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:50:55.160795+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:07.547012
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge
(dissenting)-
With the principles announced in the majority opinion I am in complete accord. Agreeing fully, though, with Captain Cuttle’s famous dictum, “The bearings of that observation lies in the application of it”, I must dissent from the application of the principles to the facts of this case as testified to and as found by the trial court.
Fully canvassing the evidence in the light of the contentions made and specifically rejecting those that the ordinance promoted health, safety, or morals, the court, though he agreed with the defendant that the value-of his property would be ruined and that the zoned property was not adapted to the use for which it was zoned, to-wit, residence property, yet sustained the ordinance on two considerations, which were inadequate to sustain it. One of these, a consideration of fact, was that the property was within close proximity to the state capítol, several state-office buildings and a public school. The other, a consideration of law, was that the-court should not substitute its judgment for that of the legislative body of the city.
In view of the decision in Standard Oil Co. v. Bowling Green, 244 Ky. 362, 50 S.W.2d 960, 86 A.L.R. 648 and of the two decisions of the Supreme Court of Florida, relied on by appellant and decided since the decision of this case below,1 in all of which *414the court, recognizing that even in this age of enlightenment the Constitution still protects the citizen against arbitrary and unreasonable action, I am in no doubt that in sustaining this admittedly confiscatory ordinance, a good general principle, the public interest in zoning, has been run into the ground, the tail of legislative confiscation by caprice has been permitted to wag the dog of judicial constitutional protection.

. City of West Palm Beach v. Edward U. Roddy Corp., 48 So.2d 709; City of Miami v. First Trust Co., 45 So.2d 681.