Court Opinion

ID: 9565272
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:17:57.748326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:31.061394
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
Although I have concurred in the Court’s judgment and opinion, I nevertheless am left with serious reservations that the Court will be seen as elevating form over substance, and honoring technicality over reality. More than that, however, the most alarming aspect of our decision today is the debilitating effect which the present appellate review procedures, or perhaps better said, the appellate review procedures as presently interpreted and applied, have on our district courts — which in days past were the only genuine protection which Idaho citizens had against the burgeoning bureaucracy. In former times — not all that distant — the district court’s judgment in this case would have been applauded, not appealed. The gist of today’s opinion for the Court is found in just a few sentences:
1. “Blaine County Ordinance No. 77-5 requires that all new construction along State Highway 75 be set back from the highway at least 100 feet. The lot upon which Daley proposed to place this house is only 105 feet deep at its deepest point.”
2. “Addressing each of the Blaine County Board of Commissioners’ reasons for denial, the district court determined that the conclusions and decisions of the Blaine County Board of Commissioners were arbitrary and capricious and clearly erroneous. On December 15, 1983, the district court entered an order of judgment, ordering that Daley be granted a conditional use permit and a variance.”
3. “It is clear from the record that Daley did not submit all the required specifications.”
4. “The district court opinion also state that the 100-foot setback requirement ‘constitutes a total taking of the appellant’s property and is not a requirement that can properly be placed upon this property since the subdivision was in existence not less than fourteen years prior to the adoption of the hundred foot setback rule.’ ”
5. “Setback requirements have long been held to be constitutional.”
6. “Under I.C. § 67-5215, the district court was acting only in an appellate capacity.”
7. “ ‘The lot does not appear to be build-able and cannot be determined to be buildable without detailed engineering data.’ That conclusion, which subsumes most of the other reasons given by the board of commissioners in their decision, is not ‘clearly erroneous in view of the reliable, probative and substantial evidence on the whole record,’ and is not ‘arbitrary or capricious or characterized *619by abuse of discretion or clearly unwarranted exercise of discretion.’ ” (Emphasis added.)
What we, the majority in this case, must face up to is that we are supplanting our wisdom as to what is arbitrary and capricious in the place of what the local district judge has determined. The local district judge, however, as with the Music Man, “knows the territory,” and we do not. I also am concerned with reliance on Workman Family Partnership v. City of Twin Falls, 104 Idaho 32, 655 P.2d 924 (1982). That case did not involve a county determination which amounted to what hére may amount to a 95 percent taking of private property without any compensation.