Krejci v. City of Saratoga Springs & Lori Yates

• Decision Date: 10 December 2013
• Docket Number: No. 20130607.,20130607.
• Citation: 749 Utah Adv. Rep. 20,322 P.3d 662
• Parties: Robert H. KREJCI, Carolyn R. Krejci, Larry N. Johnson, Cindy B. Collyer, Stuart C. Collyer, Richard M. Sanford, and Marilyn A. Sanford, Petitioners, v. CITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS and Lori Yates, Saratoga Springs City Recorder, Respondents, and Capital Assets Financial Services, Real Party in Interest.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

322 P.3d 662

749 Utah Adv. Rep. 20

Robert H. KREJCI, Carolyn R. Krejci, Larry N. Johnson, Cindy B. Collyer, Stuart C. Collyer, Richard M. Sanford, and Marilyn A. Sanford, Petitioners,

v. CITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS and Lori Yates, Saratoga Springs City Recorder, Respondents,andCapital Assets Financial Services, Real Party in Interest.

No. 20130607.

Supreme Court of Utah.

Dec. 10, 2013.

Kevin E. Anderson, Craig M. Call, Christopher B. McCullock, Salt Lake City, for petitioners.

Kevin S. Thurman, Saratoga Springs, for respondents D. Scott Crook, Richard R. Arnold, Jr., Salt Lake City, for real party in interest.

Justice LEE, opinion of the Court:

¶ 1 This case presents an important constitutional question we recently reserved without resolving—whether site-specific rezoning is legislative action subject to referendum. See Carter v. Lehi City, 2012 UT 2, ¶ 75 n. 52, 269 P.3d 141. We now answer that question in the affirmative.

I

¶ 2 Capital Assets Financial Services owns approximately twelve acres of property within the City of Saratoga Springs. In 2012, Capital Assets asked the city council to rezone its property from a low density to a medium density residential zone. Capital Assets requested the rezone so that it could develop the land into seventy-seven “mansion style town homes.” The city council granted the request by enacting an ordinance rezoning the twelve acres of property. In response, a group of citizens circulated a petition to reverse the ordinance. After obtaining the required signatures, the group submitted the petition to the City and requested that the issue be placed on the ballot as a referendum. The city recorder determined that the petition complied with the requirements of Utah Code section 20A–7–601 and agreed to place it on the ballot.

¶ 3 In response, Capital Assets filed a complaint against the City in the Fourth Judicial District Court. It requested a declaratory judgment that the referendum challenged an action of the city council made through its administrative (and not legislative) power. Capital Assets did not name the citizens' group as a party or serve it with process. And although the citizens had actual notice of the proceedings, they did not intervene.

¶ 4 The district court ruled in favor of Capital Assets, declaring that the site-specific zoning at issue was administrative and thus not subject to referendum. On June 4, 2013, it ordered the City to declare the petition invalid and enjoined it from placing the referendum on the ballot. The city recorder complied with the order and removed the measure from the ballot. In response, the citizens' group filed a petition under Utah Code section 20A–7–607(4)(a), which authorizes“any voter” to apply for an extraordinary writ when a local clerk refuses to file a referendum petition.

¶ 5 Capital Assets, as a real party in interest, moved to intervene, challenging the statutory authority of petitioners to seek an extraordinary writ. And it also defended the district court's conclusion that site-specific rezoning is an administrative action that was not properly referable. The City of Saratoga Springs opted not to take a position on the merits of this question.

¶ 6 On August 23, 2013, after hearing oral argument, we issued an order granting Capital Assets' motion to intervene, granting the petition, and directing the City to place the referendum on the ballot. This opinion sets forth our reasoning for that decision.

II

¶ 7 Capital Assets raises threshold challenges to petitioners' authority to seek an extraordinary writ. It first contends that this case falls outside the domain of the statute invoked by petitioners, Utah Code section 20A–7–607. And alternatively, it claims that petitioners lost any authority they may have had to petition for an extraordinary writ by failing to intervene in the proceeding filed by Capital Assets in the Fourth District. We reject both arguments. We find the petition procedurally proper and conclude that petitioners are not legally barred from pressing it. And we also hold that petitioners have satisfied the standards in Utah R.App. P. 19(b)(4), in that they had no other plain, speedy, or adequate remedy before them.

A

¶ 8 By statute, “any voter” may bring a petition for an extraordinary writ when a “local clerk refuses to accept and file any referendum petition.” Utah Code § 20A–7–607(4)(a). Capital Assets asks us to construe the statute to apply only in circumstances where the local clerk independently determines that the petition is legally deficient. Perhaps such a scenario is more common than the present one. But that is no reason to construe the statute to be limited to that circumstance. Here, the clerk first accepted the petition and then rejected it after the district court entered its order. The presence of a court order does not make the clerk's ultimate rejection of the petition any less of a refusal; it was still a refusal, and on that basis it must be deemed to fall under the clear terms of the statute.

¶ 9 The statute provides no exception for cases where the local clerk refuses to file the petition because she is ordered by a court to do so—or any criterion by which the basis for the refusal would be relevant. By its terms the statute applies to all refusals. We cannot append additional conditions to the statutory framework by judicial fiat.

B

¶ 10 The decision to grant or deny a petition for extraordinary writ is discretionary. Carpenter v. Riverton City, 2004 UT 68, ¶ 4, 103 P.3d 127. Petitions for extraordinary writ are appropriate only where “no other plain, speedy, or adequate remedy exists.” Utah R.App. P. 19(b)(4); see also Carpenter, 2004 UT 68, ¶ 4, 103 P.3d 127 (“[T]his court typically limits itself to addressing only those petitions that cannot be decided in another forum.”). Thus, where “the petition is presented on hotly disputed material allegations of fact and there is no record below,” it is more appropriate and practical for litigants to assert their claim in the district court. Carpenter, 2004 UT 68, ¶ 4, 103 P.3d 127. And where a petitioner had an opportunity to file an appeal but failed to do so, it cannot use an extraordinary writ to gain a second shot at an appeal. Friends of Great Salt Lake v. Utah Dept. of Natural Res., 2010 UT 20, ¶ 23, 230 P.3d 1014 (“Before we can address a petition for extraordinary relief, the petitioning party must have exhaust[ed] all available avenues of appeal.” (alteration in original, internal quotation marks omitted)). These limitations keep litigants from bypassing traditional avenues for judicial relief, or in other words from substituting the extraordinary writ process for what should have been ordinary litigation—i.e., as a remedy for self-imposed emergencies.

¶ 11 None of the above stands in the way of our hearing this petition. The petition asks us to resolve a question of law that does not depend on unresolved questions of fact. And petitioners were not parties in the district court proceeding, and thus had no opportunity for an appeal.

¶ 12 Because petitioners failed to intervene in the district court proceedings, and thus have no standing to appeal, Capital Assets insists that they should likewise be foreclosed from pressing the matter on an extraordinary writ. We see the matter differently. We see no basis for a hard-and-fast rule requiring intervention as a prerequisite to the filing of a petition for extraordinary writ. The governing standard is Utah R.App. P. 19(b)(4), which calls for a showing that “no other plain, speedy, or adequate remedy exists.” And that flexible standard leaves room for a decision to forgo intervention, while subsequently seeking an extraordinary writ, in the circumstances of this case.

¶ 13 Society of Professional Journalists v. Bullock, 743 P.2d 1166 (Utah 1987), is not to the contrary. In that case, a group of journalists had participated in the underlying criminal proceedings by requesting transcripts of closed hearings. Id. at 1170. When those arguments failed, and the hearings were ordered closed, the journalists brought an extraordinary writ to challenge the propriety of the closure order. Id. at 1169. Because the petitioners in that case were involved in the lower court proceedings, we acknowledged the potential for the extraordinary writ process to be abused as a tool for circumventing a traditional appeal. Id. at 1171 (“[T]he fact that a writ can be used to obtain appellate-type review of a lower tribunal's ruling raises a concern that no party be advantaged insofar as standing is concerned by reason of having petitioned this Court for a writ rather than having proceeded by way of appeal.”). And we noted that this problem was exacerbated by the fact that a party who did not have standing to appear in the district court could potentially use an extraordinary writ to gain appellate-like review of the district court's rulings. Id. In these circumstances, we held that an extraordinary writ “in the nature of an appeal” could not be advanced absent a showing of “appellate standing.” Id.

¶ 14 This case does not fit the mold of Society of Professional Journalists. Petitioners in this case were not involved in the district court proceedings; their extraordinary writ is accordingly not “in the nature of an appeal.” The order they seek from us may have the potential to conflict with (and invalidate) the order entered by the district court, but their petition to us does not directly challenge the order. Nor could it. As outsiders to the district court proceeding, petitioners were neither bound by nor entitled to appeal from an order entered in the case between Capital Assets and Saratoga Springs. Instead, as a non-party, petitioners were free to pursue their own independent suit on the issue.

¶ 15 Our liberal joinder rules afford ample discretion to the parties—to choose amplified litigation involving multiple claims and multiple parties, or to opt instead for a narrower suit involving...