Opinion

Halfway House, Inc. v. City of Portland

  • 670 A.2d 1377
  • 1996 Me. LEXIS 38
Court
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
Filed
Feb 5, 1996
Status
Published
Author
Glassman
On the bench
Wathen, Roberts, Glassman, Clifford, Rudman, Dana, Lipez
Cited by
74 cases

finding that Pharos House had standing to challenge constitutionality of City ordinance where its existing business interests were directly affected by the ordinance

How later courts described this case

  • finding that Pharos House had standing to challenge constitutionality of City ordinance where its existing business interests were directly affected by the ordinance
  • holding that potential economic injury that results from government action is sufficient to confer standing
  • dismissing as moot an appeal from the denial of a conditional use permit where the intervening sale of property rendered any relief meaningless
  • The ",gist of the question of standing' is whether the party seeking review has a sufficient personal stake in a justiciable controversy to assure the existence of that' concrete adverseness' that facilitates diligent development of the legal issues presented."

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

GLASSMAN, Justice,

with whom ROBERTS, Justice, joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Although I agree with the Court as to its disposition of Count I of the Pharos House complaint, I must respectfully dissent from that part of the Court’s decision relating to the trial court’s dismissal without prejudice of Counts II and III of the Pharos House complaint. By Count I of its complaint, the Pharos House sought review of the Planning Board’s denial of its conditional use permit. By Count II of its complaint, Pharos House sought a declaration that the amended ordinance constituted a taking of Pharos House’s property rights without due process of law. *1382 By Count III, it sought costs, interest and an award of reasonable attorney fees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the violation of its constitutional rights by the City as alleged in Count II.

The trial court determined that because “[t]he Planning Board’s decision to deny the conditional use permit was not based on the amended zoning ordinance [and] [t]hus, Pha-ros House is not affected by the amended ordinance in a specific way that creates a ‘case or controversy”’ and, accordingly, dismissed Counts II and III without prejudice. A fair reading of the trial court’s decision reveals that, after the court in affirming the denial determined that the Board’s denial of the permit was not based on the amended ordinance, it properly determined that in the context of the case before it there was no remaining justiciable issue presented by Pha-ros House in Counts II and III of its complaint. I would affirm the trial court’s judgment as to Counts II and III.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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