CT Supreme Court Holds Appellate Court Incorrectly Determined That City’s Zoning Administrator Had Authority to Void Plaintiff’s Application for a Special Permit

This post was authored by Matthew Loescher, Esq.

After the plaintiff Farmington-Girard, LLC, applied for a special permit to construct a fast-food restaurant on property that it owned in the city of Hartford, it filed four separate appeals challenging various text amendments to the Hartford Zoning Regulations and zoning map changes. These changes, which were made by the defendant, the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, would effectively preclude the plaintiff from obtaining the special permit. The trial court dismissed the appeals on the ground that the plaintiff had failed to exhaust its administrative remedies when it did not appeal to the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals the decision of the city’s zoning administrator to reject, as void, the plaintiff’s special permit application on the ground that it was incomplete. The plaintiff appealed to the Appellate Court, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court.

On appeal, plaintiff argued that the Appellate Court erred in finding that the city’s zoning regulations conferred authority on city zoning administrator Dodds to act on the plaintiff’s application for a special permit, and that Dodds’ determination that the application was void was appealable to the Board. The court found that nothing in §68(g) of the regulations or the enabling statutes suggested that zoning administrators had any authority to act, “authoritatively, definitively, or for any reason”, on an application for a special permit. As such, the court found that Dodds did not have the authority to determine that the plaintiff’s application for a special permit was void because it was incomplete.

The court found that Dodds’ letter purporting to void the plaintiff’s application for a special permit was not appealable either to the Board or to the Superior Court because it was not a legal decision made by the official charged with the enforcement of the city’s regulations governing applications for special permits. Instead, the court determined this letter was a null and void ultra vires act. Accordingly, the court held that the plaintiff’s consolidated appeals were not moot and that the Appellate Court erred in determining that the trial court properly dismissed the plaintiff’s appeals for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The judgment of the Appellate Court was therefore reversed and remanded.

Farmington-Girard, LLC v Planning and Zoning Commission of the City of Hartford, 2021 WL 2324251 (CT 6/7/2021)