Court Opinion

ID: 9551560
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:55:18.157041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:10.325583
License: Public Domain

LANGTRY, J.,
concurring.
I agree that Williams v. Henry, 70 Or 466, 142 P 337 (1914), dictates the result in this case. By doing so, technicality prevails over substance.
In Williams, where 16 persons petitioned for a school district boundary change and it was granted, some remonstrators against the change pursued the remedy of writ of review. They served only the secretary of the district boundary board as the “opposite party” under the requirement of what is now ORS 34.080. That statute reads the same now as it did in 1914.
The Supreme Court held that the trial court gained no jurisdiction without proper service. The clear implication of the holding is that such “proper service” would be service upon each of the 16 petitioners and each member of the district boundary board.
Land-use cases were virtually unknown when Williams was decided. When land-use decisions are tested in court, writ of review presently is most often the proceeding employed. In land-use hearings there often *243may be dozens of petitioners and remonstrators advancing various points of view, varieties of which may be adopted. Under Williams, they all, or nearly all, are “opposite parties.” Although all of them may have had actual knowledge of the writ proceeding, the court could not have had jurisdiction unless all of them were proved to have been served.
The possibility of technical error in the morass of writ of review procedure becomes so great that counsel would be well advised to seek a more flexible (and often broader) remedy—e.g., a declaratory proceeding.
On the narrow question of attaining court jurisdiction through service of process, recent liberal interpretations of procedural statutes like that in Meury v. Jarrell, 16 Or App 239, 517 P2d 1221, aff'd 269 Or 606, 525 P2d 1286 (1974); and Stroh v. SAIF, 261 Or 117, 492 P2d 472 (1972), point an improved direction. However, given a definitive decision like Williams, old as it is, this court is bound by it.