Occasionally applicants can get frustrated when local officials charged with processing, accepting or reviewing applications and requests neglect to do so.  States provide various procedural remedies, often through the civil codes, so that upon petition, courts might direct the official(s) to act.  Two methods of relief are mandamus and declaratory judgment.  In a mandamus action, the petitioner is typically requesting the court to require an official to perform a ministerial action which he or she is legally required to do.  Courts have held that mandamus is an extraordinary remedy. Typically, a declaratory judgment proceeding is used when there are mixed questions of law and fact in controversy. 

The Virginia Supreme Court has held that mandamus is not the proper action to bring when challenging the rejection of a subdivision application by the local land development official, when such rejection was based upon the official’s belief that the application failed to comply with the local zoning law. The Town’s subdivision ordinance requires the official to “conduct an official review of the application and preliminary plat of the proposed subdivision for completeness and accuracy…” and provides that incomplete applications will not be accepted until deficiencies have been addressed. This requires the land development official to decide mixed questions of law and fact, and hence the acceptance of an application is not a ministerial act. Therefore, the official could not be compelled to accept the application by mandamus. The Court distinguished this case from a situation where county officials had failed to take action for two years on a site plan application then pending before them, because the duty to take action within a reasonable period of time is ministerial and so in that case mandamus was appropriate.  In the present case, the land development official rejected the application within ten business days as required under the local ordinance.  The Court concluded that a request for a declaratory judgment would have been the appropriate action here. 

Umstattd v. Centex Homes, 2007 WL 2683772 (Va. 9/14/2007). Opinion also available at: http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1062152.pdf