City of Des Moines v. City Development Bd.

• Decision Date: 06 September 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-0419.
• Citation: 633 N.W.2d 305
• Parties: CITY OF DES MOINES, Appellant, v. CITY DEVELOPMENT BOARD OF THE STATE of Iowa, Warren County, Iowa, The Iowa Rural Rights Association, Robert Dunn, June Tenhagen, David Van Patten, Raymond E. Phillips, Jr., Steve Klinefelter, Peg Klinefelter, William Don Harbert, Jim Shelley, Wayne Jones, Jo Jones, Bruce Strain, Debbie Cunningham, Car Cunningham, and John Francis Anderson, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

633 N.W.2d 305

CITY OF DES MOINES, Appellant, v. CITY DEVELOPMENT BOARD OF THE STATE of Iowa, Warren County, Iowa, The Iowa Rural Rights Association, Robert Dunn, June Tenhagen, David Van Patten, Raymond E. Phillips, Jr., Steve Klinefelter, Peg Klinefelter, William Don Harbert, Jim Shelley, Wayne Jones, Jo Jones, Bruce Strain, Debbie Cunningham, Car Cunningham, and John Francis Anderson, Appellees.

Nos. 00-0419.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

September 6, 2001.

Mark Godwin, Deputy City Attorney, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General and Christie J. Scase, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee City Development Board.

Robert H. Freilich of Freilich, Leitner & Carlisle, Kansas City, Missouri, and Kevin Parker, Warren County Attorney, for appellee Warren County.

James E. Van Werden of Hopkins & Huebner, P.C., Adel, for individual appellees and appellee Iowa Rural Rights Association.

John F. Anderson, Des Moines, pro se, appellee.

CADY, Justice.

In this appeal, we must decide if the district court had jurisdiction to hear a petition for judicial review of a decision by the City Development Board of Iowa to stay proceedings on a petition for annexation filed by the City of Des Moines. We conclude the district court did not have jurisdiction and affirm the decision of the district court.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

In June 1998, the City of Des Moines (Des Moines) filed a petition with the City Development Board of Iowa (Development Board) for involuntary annexation. The Development Board is an administrative agency established to oversee city development in Iowa. Des Moines sought to annex approximately fifteen square miles of land in Warren County. The petition proposed the largest area of annexation in the history of Iowa, and included land near the city of Carlisle. Des Moines and Carlisle had entered into a ten-year written annexation moratorium agreement on July 2, 1990.

Around the same time as the annexation petition was filed by Des Moines, John Anderson and other property owners west of the city of Carlisle also filed a petition for involuntary annexation with the Development Board. They described themselves collectively as residents of "West Carlisle" and sought to annex the city of Carlisle. Additionally, Robert Dunn and many of the other property owners in Warren County, as well as the Iowa Rural Rights Association, filed a motion to dismiss the annexation petition filed by Des Moines. They claimed it contained numerous defects, including a defect in the legal description.

On July 16, 1998, the Development Board dismissed the petition for annexation filed by the residents of "West Carlisle." On September 10, 1998, the Development Board denied Dunn's motion to dismiss and approved the petition filed by Des Moines. However, it also tabled or stayed further action on the Des Moines petition pending judicial review of the decision to dismiss the petition sought by the residents of "West Carlisle."¹

Dunn and the other Warren County residents filed a petition for certiorari with the district court challenging the failure of the Development Board to dismiss the annexation petition filed by Des Moines. On March 9, 1999, the district court dismissed the certiorari petition. It concluded judicial review was the exclusive means to review a Development Board decision. Dunn then filed an appeal to this court.

On May 14, 1999, the district court denied the petition for judicial review filed by the residents of "West Carlisle." Moreover, the prior stay order by the Development Board expired with the issuance of the district court decision. Consequently, the Development Board appealed the district court decision to this court.

In June 1999, Des Moines filed a motion with the Development Board to proceed with its annexation petition and to divide the annexation territory into two parts. On June 17, 1999, the Development Board voted to stay any further action pending resolution of the two cases on appeal to this court.

On July 6, 1999, Des Moines filed a petition for mandamus and writ of certiorari with the district court challenging the decision by the Development Board to again stay the annexation petition. The respondents filed a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court granted the motion to dismiss on October 15, 1999.

On November 4, 1999, Des Moines filed a petition with the district court for judicial review of the decision by the Development Board to stay its annexation petition pending the two appeals to this court. The Development Board moved to dismiss the petition for review. Warren County, the Iowa Rural Rights Association, and the individual property owners also moved to dismiss the petition.

The Development Board claimed judicial review was improper because Des Moines had failed to exhaust all of its administrative remedies and there was no showing that a final agency action would not provide an adequate remedy. In essence, the Development Board claimed Des Moines had to wait until the stay was lifted and the Development Board action was completed before judicial review was available. The other respondents claimed the petition for judicial review filed by Des Moines must be dismissed because it was not filed within thirty days of the Development Board's original decision on June 17, 1999.

Des Moines filed a resistance to the motions. Among other allegations, Des Moines claimed that it pled sufficient facts to support a showing that final action by the Development Board would not provide an adequate remedy. It also claimed the statutory time limits to seek judicial review did not apply because the stay order was not a final action by the Development Board.

The district court dismissed the petition for judicial review. It determined the thirty-day statutory time limit to seek judicial review did not apply to interlocutory appeals and it had jurisdiction to hear the petition for judicial review. Nevertheless, it found Des Moines failed to show that review of the final agency action would not provide an adequate remedy, and dismissed the petition. Des Moines appealed.

II. Standard of Review.

Our review is for errors at law. See IES Utils. Inc. v. Iowa Dep't of Revenue & Fin., 545 N.W.2d 536, 538 (Iowa 1996)

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III. Jurisdiction.

Our first obligation in this case is to determine if we have authority to decide the appeal. See State ex rel. Vega v. Medina, 549 N.W.2d 507, 508 (Iowa 1996)

. A timely petition for judicial review from an administrative decision is a jurisdictional prerequisite. Sioux City Brick & Tile Co. v. Employment Appeal Bd., 449 N.W.2d 634, 638 (Iowa 1989); Foley v. Iowa Dep't of Transp., 362 N.W.2d 208, 210 (Iowa 1985). If the district court in this case was without authority to hear the case because the petition for judicial review was untimely, the action must be dismissed. See Sharp v. Iowa Dep't of Job Serv., 492 N.W.2d 668, 669 (Iowa 1992); 2 Am.Jur.2d Administrative Law § 569, at 558-59 (1994).

The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act is found in Iowa Code chapter 17A, and addresses the subject of judicial review in a comprehensive manner. See Iowa Code § 17A.19 (1997). It first provides that "[a] person or party who has exhausted all adequate administrative remedies and who is aggrieved or adversely affected by any final agency action is entitled to judicial review...." Id. § 17A.19(1). This provision reflects the well-established administrative law doctrine known as the exhaustion of remedies, which exists principally to prevent courts from interfering with the administrative process until it has been completed. McKart v. United States, 395 U.S. 185, 193, 89 S.Ct. 1657, 1662, 23 L.Ed.2d 194, 203 (1969). There is, however, an essential exception to this doctrine that permits interlocutory review of an agency decision if the delay in obtaining judicial review until the agency proceeding is completed would deprive the litigant of an adequate remedy. Salsbury Labs. v. Iowa Dep't of Envtl. Quality, 276 N.W.2d 830, 836 (Iowa 1979). This exception is grafted into section 17A.19(1), which provides:

A preliminary, procedural or intermediate agency action is immediately reviewable if all adequate administrative remedies have been exhausted and review of the final agency action would not provide an adequate remedy.

Thus, a party seeking interlocutory review from a decision of an administrative agency must not only establish that waiting for the administrative process to be completed would not provide an adequate remedy, but must also satisfy the exhaustion of administrative remedies doctrine. Salsbury Labs., 276 N.W.2d at 836.

The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act also establishes a host of rules and procedures governing the judicial review process, including a time limit for the filing of a petition for judicial review. See generally Iowa Code § 17A.19. In a contested case proceeding, this time limit requires a petition for judicial review to be "filed within thirty days after the issuance of the agency's final decision in that contested case."²Id. § 17A.19(3). On the other hand, "a petition for judicial review of agency action other than the decision in a contested case ... may be filed at any time petitioner is aggrieved or adversely affected by [the] action." Id. Thus, a petition for judicial review in a contested case proceeding must be filed within thirty days from the "agency's final decision," while a petition for judicial review of an agency rule or other noncontested case proceeding may be filed at any time. 2 Am.Jur.2d Administrative Law § 569, at 558. We have previously determined that the thirty-day rule applicable to the judicial review of agency decisions does not apply by implication to other types of agency action. See Oliver v. Teleprompter Corp., 299 N.W.2d 683, 687 (Iowa 1980)

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Des Moines does not claim that the present action falls outside the definition of a contested case...