Court Opinion

ID: 9715939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:20:39.428747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:40.104359
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
I am constrained to dissent because there was ample evidence before the Council in 1961 to support its decision to draw the zoning line so as to include the property involved as part of neighboring residential land rather than as a part of neighboring industrial land. The record sustains the finding of the Chancellor that the question before the Council in 1961 had been fairly debatable, that the property owner could make a reasonable, as distinguished from highly profitable, residential use of the property, and that the Council’s action was not arbitrary, capricious or illegal.
Since the record sustains these findings of the Chancellor, the only function of this Court in the zoning process is to affirm. The facts that evidence favorable to the property owner was improperly received by the Council, or that development in the area between 1961 and 1964 actually had been residential and so supported the view the Council took in 1961, or that the Chancellor saw the area and this development for himself (without objection) did not and could not make improper or illegal what the Council did in 1961. Proper and competent evidence in 1961 permitted the Council to make the choice it did; its wisdom or soundness is not for us to pass on. I think the remand inevitably will suggest that the Court, despite its dis*10claimer thinks the Council’s action was unwise and unsound and that it should reconsider, and I feel that the making of such a suggestion certainly should not be and, properly or permissibly is not, part of the judicial function in zoning cases.