City of Irving v. Dallas/Fort Worth Intern. Airport Bd.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1995
• Docket Number: No. 2-94-100-CV,2-94-100-CV
• Citation: 894 S.W.2d 456
• Parties: The CITY OF IRVING, TEXAS, The City of Euless, Texas, and the City of Grapevine, Texas, Appellants, v. DALLAS/FORT WORTH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BOARD, American Airlines, Inc., Delta Air Lines, Inc., United Parcel Service Co., and Attorney General of Texas, Appellees.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 456

894 S.W.2d 456

The CITY OF IRVING, TEXAS, The City of Euless, Texas, and the City of Grapevine, Texas, Appellants, v. DALLAS/FORT WORTH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BOARD, American Airlines, Inc., Delta Air Lines, Inc., United Parcel Service Co., and Attorney General of Texas, Appellees.

No. 2-94-100-CV.

Court of Appeals of Texas Fort Worth.

Feb. 28, 1995.

Rehearing Overruled April 13, 1995.

Robert H. Power, Christopher J. Caso, Power & Deatherage, Irving, Clarence A. Guittard, Guittard, Hyden & Guittard, Dallas, Don J. Rorschach, City of Irving, Irving, Bob McFarland, Cribbs & McFarland, Arlington, for appellants.

Dee J. Kelly, Marshall M. Searcy, Jr., Kelly, Hart & Hallman, Fort Worth, Kevin E. Cox, Dallas/Fort Worth Int'l Airport, Texas, Mike Joplin, David J. LaBrec, P. Michael Jung, Strasburger & Price, L.L.P., Mike McKool, Jr., Eric W. Buether, Richard A. Lempert, McKool Smith, P.C., Peter A. Winn, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Dallas, for appellees.

Before DAY, J., and BILL STEPHENS, J., Sitting by Assignment.

OPINION

DAY, Justice.

Appellants, the cities of Irving, Euless and Grapevine, Texas ("the Cities") bring this appeal from a declaratory judgment action which upheld the constitutionality of a state law giving municipal airport authorities the power to make land-use decisions for property within the geographic boundaries of the airport. In ten points of error, the Cities claim the trial court erred in holding the law constitutional, in granting summary judgment for appellees, in denying summary judgment for the Cities, and in awarding costs to appellees.

The Cities describe the issue before us as whether the Legislature may preclude home-rule cities from protecting the health, safety and welfare of their citizens. The Board says the matter is one which affects the future of the primary airport in North Texas and the second-busiest airport in the world. At stake are the integrity of local zoning laws and a $3.5 billion dollar airport expansion. Because we conclude the legislative enactments challenged by the Cities are not unconstitutional, we overrule appellant's points of error and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

PROCEDURAL SUMMARY

In or around 1965, the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth entered into a Contract and Agreement to construct a regional airport ¹ ("D/FW Airport"). In 1968, the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth signed a contract creating the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Board ("the Board"), pursuant to the Texas Municipal Airports Act ("the Act"), to operate D/FW Airport. ² The Board has no separate governmental authority. ³ Irving, Euless and Grapevine annexed territory on which the airport was to be located but did not attempt to interfere with the airport's construction or operation through local zoning ordinances.

In 1971, the Board issued a Master Plan for D/FW Airport, detailing land uses for the facility until the year 2001, ⁴ and each of the Cities allowed D/FW Airport to build and expand in accordance with the Master Plan. ⁵ Between 1987 and 1989, ⁶ the Board announced plans for a $3.5 billion dollar expansion to D/FW Airport, which would include the construction of two new runways. The Board maintains the construction of the additional facilities is necessary to handle projected increases in traffic to more than one hundred million passengers annually by the year 2010. ⁷ The Cities opposed the expansion plan, and in 1989 and 1990 amended their zoning ordinances to essentially require the Board to submit a revised site plan and environmental impact information in order to obtain the necessary special and governmental use permits.

In 1990, the Board sought a declaratory judgment in district court in Dallas County that the zoning ordinances were preempted by the Act and a scheme of federal statutes and regulations. In this action (the "1990 suit"), the Cities counterclaimed for a declaration that the zoning ordinances were not preempted or, alternatively, that the Act was unconstitutional under the "home rule" amendment to the Texas Constitution. ⁸

The Dallas County district court severed out fact-intensive issues regarding the validity of the zoning ordinances under the Zoning Enabling Act (creating what will be referred to as the "1991 suit") ⁹ and rendered a declaratory judgment in the 1990 suit which held the zoning ordinances were not preempted by the Act or by federal statutes or regulations. As a result, the court dismissed without prejudice the Cities' conditional prayer for a declaratory judgment concerning the unconstitutionality of the Act, and the Cities did not appeal from this dismissal. The Dallas Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling in the 1990 suit on March 31, 1993. ¹⁰ The Board then appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1993, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 348, which amended portions of the Act and which contained the following language:

If the constituent public agencies of a joint board are populous home-rule municipalities [i.e., home-rule municipalities whose population exceeds 400,000], these powers [to plan, establish, develop, construct, enlarge, improve, maintain, equip, operate, regulate, protect and police municipal airports] are exclusively the powers of the board regardless of whether all or part of the airport, air navigation facility, or airport hazard area is located within or outside the territorial limits of any of the constituent public agencies and another municipality, county, or other political subdivision shall not enact or enforce a zoning ordinance, subdivision regulation, construction code, or any other ordinance purporting to regulate the use or development of property applicable within the geographic boundaries of the airport as it may be expanded.

Senate Bill 348 was signed by the governor on May 6, 1993 and became effective immediately.

The Cities announced their immediate plans to challenge the constitutionality of Senate Bill 348 ¹¹, and as a result, the Board filed suit in Tarrant County on June 8, 1993, (the "1993 suit") seeking a declaratory judgment that the law is valid and constitutional. The Attorney General and three primary users of D/FW Airport (American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Parcel Service) intervened to support the constitutionality of Senate Bill 348. ¹² The Cities then filed a plea in abatement, claiming that the Tarrant County trial court should have abated the 1993 suit in light of the prior pending case in Dallas County. At a hearing on August 12, 1993, the plea in abatement was denied. The Tarrant County court also issued an injunction barring the Cities from challenging the constitutionality of Senate Bill 348 in any other court.

On September 29, 1993, nearly four months after the Board filed its declaratory judgment action in Tarrant County, the Texas Supreme Court issued an order in the 1990 suit, remanding it to the Dallas County district court to consider the validity, constitutionality and applicability of Senate Bill 348 to the cities. ¹³ The Cities again requested that the trial be abated in Tarrant County, and that request was denied a second time by the district court. In Dallas/Fort Worth Int'l Airport Bd. v. City of Irving, 868 S.W.2d 750 (Tex.1993, orig. proceeding) (per curiam) ("DFW II "), the Texas Supreme Court conditionally granted a writ of prohibition against the Tarrant County court preventing it from taking any action interfering with the Dallas County court's consideration of the constitutionality of Senate Bill 348. The Court directed the Tarrant County district court to delete the injunction and to "issue no order interfering with or attempting to control, directly or indirectly, the remanded litigation," id. at 751, but also said that "[a]ll relief not expressly granted is denied." Id.

The Tarrant County court dissolved the injunction in compliance with the ruling, and the Tarrant County trial judge sought clarification from the Texas Supreme Court as to whether he could proceed with the 1993 case. Specifically, in a letter to the clerk of the Court, Judge Jeff Walker wrote that his "reading of the per curiam opinion is that I may proceed but I am prohibited from enjoining the Cities from pursuing the constitutionality question in the Dallas court or elsewhere. If I am incorrect and the Supreme Court has abated the proceedings in the 96th District Court, I need to know that." The Cities filed a Motion for Rehearing in the Texas Supreme Court also seeking clarification of whether the Court's opinion abated the Tarrant County suit. The Texas Supreme Court denied rehearing and, according to the Board, therefore implicitly denied clarification of the prohibition ruling. The Tarrant County court then rendered summary judgment for the Board and intervenors and held Senate Bill 348 to be constitutional. In March, 1994, the Cities again requested the Texas Supreme Court issue an unconditional writ of prohibition; the request was denied on September 1, 1994.

In June, 1994, the Dallas County district court decided not to rule on the cross-motions for summary judgment in the 1990 case, advising the parties that a "ruling which either agrees or disagrees with the prior ruling of another district court on the identical issues would seem to serve no useful purpose." ¹⁴

On January 12, 1995, the Dallas County district court rendered a summary declaratory judgment holding that the Act preempts the Cities' zoning ordinances and denying their request for a declaration that the Act, as amended by Senate Bill 348, is unconstitutional.

POINT OF ERROR ONE

The Cities first complain that the trial court erred in denying appellants' joint plea in abatement because there was a prior pending case in Dallas County. The Cities first filed their plea in abatement on July 2, 1993, less than one month after the Board filed its 1993 suit asking the court to determine the constitutionality of Senate Bill 348. The trial...