Parker v. Town of Milton

• Decision Date: 18 December 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-422.,97-422.
• Citation: 726 A.2d 477
• Parties: Wilbur PARKER, et al. v. TOWN OF MILTON, et al.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

726 A.2d 477

Wilbur PARKER, et al. v. TOWN OF MILTON, et al.

No. 97-422.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

December 18, 1998.

Motion for Reargument Denied February 16, 1999.

John L. Franco, Jr., Burlington, for plaintiffs-appellants.

William H. Sorrell, Attorney General, Ron Shems, Assistant Attorney General, and David Groff, Law Clerk (On the Brief), Montpelier, for defendants-appellees.

Present AMESTOY, C.J., and MORSE, JOHNSON and SKOGLUND, JJ., and KATZ, Superior Judge, Specially Assigned.

JOHNSON, J.

Plaintiffs, six individual Vermont residents and two labor unions, appeal a superior court order dismissing their complaint. Plaintiffs opposed the construction of a bridge in the Town of Milton and alleged violations of the public trust doctrine, their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection of the laws, and the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act. The superior court dismissed their complaint for lack of standing with respect to their declaratory judgment action, and failure to state a claim with respect to their constitutional and statutory causes of action. We affirm.

The Town of Milton (Town) applied for a required encroachment permit¹ to build a bridge across Arrowhead Mountain Lake that would connect Route 7 with a town highway and an industrial site owned by Husky Injection Moldings. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) held a public information meeting concerning the Town's permit application after a petition was presented pursuant to 29 V.S.A. § 405(a). The DEC subsequently issued an encroachment permit to the Town of Milton on June 6, 1997, which allowed construction of the proposed bridge.²

On July 25, 1997, plaintiffs filed an action in superior court arguing that because the public trust doctrine³ prevents the Legislature from granting rights in the public trust property for private use, see State v. Central Vt. Ry., 153 Vt. 337, 344, 571 A.2d 1128, 1131 (1989), the Legislature therefore has a nondelegable duty to determine whether the bridge at issue in this case in fact serves a public use. Specifically, plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment stating that, in addition to obtaining an encroachment permit, the Town of Milton is required to obtain (1) a legislative grant of airspace over the lake and (2) a legislative determination that the bridge is a "public use" within the meaning of the public trust doctrine.⁴

Plaintiffs also claim they were denied their right under the United States Constitution to procedural due process and equal protection because their representative was not allowed to present their interests at the public hearing. Plaintiffs allege that others in attendance at the hearing shouted to prevent their representative from speaking and the DEC officer conducting the hearing ruled their representative out of order. Finally, plaintiffs allege that the encroachment permit violated the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act, 3 V.S.A. §§ 801-849 (VAPA), because it was issued without a "contested case" hearing, which plaintiffs allege is required by 3 V.S.A. § 801(b)(2).

The superior court dismissed plaintiffs' challenge to the encroachment permit, finding that plaintiffs did not have standing to mount such a challenge because they merely asserted the legal conclusion that the public trust was being derogated and did not describe any actual injury, only generalized grievances. The trial court further found that plaintiffs had not alleged elements sufficient to sustain an equal protection claim and were not "aggrieved persons" within the meaning of the VAPA, and therefore dismissed the constitutional and VAPA-based causes of action for failure to state a claim.

I. The Standing Requirement

We first address whether plaintiffs have standing to request a declaratory judgment with respect to the encroachment permit. A plaintiff must allege facts sufficient to confer standing "[o]n the face of the complaint." Town of Cavendish v. Vermont Pub. Power Supply Auth., 141 Vt. 144, 147-48, 446 A.2d 792, 794 (1982). The standing requirement originates in Article III of the United States Constitution, which states that federal courts have jurisdiction only over actual cases or controversies. See U.S. Const. art. III. This requirement has been adopted in Vermont. "The judicial power, as conferred by the Constitution of this State upon this Court, is the same as that given to the Federal Supreme Court by the United States Constitution; that is, the right to determine actual controversies arising between adverse litigants, duly instituted in courts of proper jurisdiction." In re Constitutionality of House Bill 88, 115 Vt. 524, 529, 64 A.2d 169, 172 (1949) (internal quotations omitted).

An element of the case or controversy requirement is that plaintiffs must have standing, that is, they must have suffered a particular injury that is attributable to the defendant and that can be redressed by a court of law. The existence of an actual controversy "turns on whether the plaintiff is suffering the threat of actual injury to a protected legal interest, or is merely speculating about the impact of some generalized grievance." Town of Cavendish, 141 Vt. at 147, 446 A.2d at 794. The standing and case or controversy requirements thus enforce the separation of powers between the three different branches of government by confining the judiciary to the adjudication of actual disputes and preventing the judiciary from presiding over broad-based policy questions that are properly resolved in the legislative arena. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984); Hinesburg Sand & Gravel Co. v. State, 166 Vt. 337, 341, 693 A.2d 1045, 1047-48 (1997).

In Vermont, a plaintiff must demonstrate standing for a court to have jurisdiction over a petition for declaratory relief. See Town of Cavendish, 141 Vt. at 147, 446 A.2d at 794; Gifford Memorial Hosp. v. Town of Randolph, 119 Vt. 66, 70, 118 A.2d 480, 483 (1955). This is because a declaratory judgment can only "`provide a declaration of rights, status, and other legal relations of parties to an actual or justiciable controversy.'" Doria v. University of Vt., 156 Vt. 114, 117, 589 A.2d 317, 318 (1991) (quoting Robtoy v. City of St. Albans, 132 Vt. 503, 504, 321 A.2d 45, 46 (1974)). Otherwise, the judgment would be no more than an advisory opinion, which we lack the constitutional power to render. See Massachusetts Mun. Wholesale Elec. Co. v. State, 161 Vt. 346, 363, 639 A.2d 995, 1006 (1994); accord Lace v. University of Vt., 131 Vt. 170, 175, 303 A.2d 475, 478 (1973).

Vermont has adopted a three-part test to determine whether a plaintiff has standing. A plaintiff must, at a minimum, show (1) injury in fact, (2) causation, and (3) redressability. See Hinesburg Sand & Gravel Co., 166 Vt. at 341, 693 A.2d at 1048 (adopting test articulated in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). Stated another way, a plaintiff must allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct, which is likely to be redressed by the requested relief. See Allen, 468 U.S. at 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315. The injury must be an "invasion of a legally protected interest," Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, not a generalized harm to the public.

The standing requirement applies to organizations as well as individuals. An association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when (1) its members have standing individually; (2) the interests it asserts are germane to the organization's purpose; and (3) the claim and relief requested do not require the participation of individual members in the action. See Hunt v. Washington State Apple Adver. Comm., 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977). An organization must show a concrete injury; an abstract interest in the outcome of an adjudication is insufficient. See Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 40, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976). Because an organization's members must have standing for the organization to have standing, we subject the union and individual plaintiffs to the same analysis.

Plaintiffs in this case argue that invoking the public trust doctrine should relieve them of the requirement to demonstrate individualized harm. They argue that, because members of the public are the beneficiaries of the public trust in navigable waters, mere status as a member of the public should be sufficient to confer standing. They analogize their claimed cause of action to a shareholder's derivative suit. Thus, plaintiffs argue, they need only show a harm to the trust as a whole, not an individualized harm to their own private property.

Contrary to plaintiffs' contention, the standing requirement of particularized injury is not suspended in cases where the plaintiff asserts the public trust doctrine. The Court has already decided this precise question. In Hazen v. Perkins, 92 Vt. 414, 105 A. 249 (1918), we found that the defendant, by virtue of the public trust doctrine, had no right to build structures that affected the lake level, and that the defendant's activities "affect[ed] the common rights of all persons and produce[d] a common injury." Id. at 421, 105 A. at 251. We further found that the defendant's actions were a public nuisance against which the state would have a remedy. See id. Nonetheless, we concluded that the plaintiffs in that case, owners of land abutting the contested body of water, were required to show "that they have suffered some special and substantial injury, distinct and apart from the general injury to the public" to maintain a private suit against such a public nuisance. Id. The impact of the defendant's activities on the plaintiffs' aesthetic enjoyment and use of the water were not deemed to be injuries sufficient to establish standing. See id. at 422, 105 A. at 252. Thus, Hazen establishes that standing is not conferred on...