Grimes v. Walton County, 91-945
| Decision Date | 02 January 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-945,91-945 |
| Citation | 591 So.2d 1091 |
| Parties | 17 Fla. L. Weekly D187 Jerry GRIMES and wife, Laura Grimes and Destin Piling and Excavation, Inc., A Florida Corporation, Appellants, v. WALTON COUNTY, a political subdivision of the State of Florida, the Walton County Board of Adjustment, an administrative agency of Walton County, and Maris Atchison, Aubrey Brannon, Roy Cassidy, Roy Godwin, Toby Rushing, Lloyd Ward, and Elmer Williams, all individuals who are members of the Walton County Board of Adjustments, Appellees, and Jack Hanna, Marilyn Hanna, Randy O'Connor, Dawn O'Connor, Christie C. Johnson, Jerome P. Johnson, Claire Lucas, Harold Lucas, A.B. Sherling, Rebecca Sherling, Robert E. Hendricks, and Barbara R. Hendricks, Intervenors. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Mark D. Davis of Ramey & Davis, DeFuniak Springs, for appellants.
George Ralph Miller, DeFuniak Springs, for appellees.
Robert C. Apgar and Darren A. Schwartz, Haben, Culpepper, Dunbar & French, P.A., Tallahassee, for intervenors.
Appellants (plaintiffs below) seek review of decisions by the trial court (1) allowing a number of parties to intervene after defendants had failed timely to respond to the complaint, and a Clerk's Default had been entered as to a number of the defendants; (2) allowing the intervenors to file a motion to dismiss; and (3) granting the intervenors' motion to dismiss and dismissing the action with prejudice. Because we conclude that it was an abuse of discretion to allow intervention in this action, we reverse.
This action had its genesis in a zoning dispute. According to the complaint, appellants Jerry Grimes and his wife, Laura Grimes, are the owners of a parcel of real property situated in Walton County. The property was purchased with the intent to use it for "personal residential, commercial business office, and construction equipment storage" purposes; the last two uses to relate to appellant Destin Piling and Excavation, Inc., a corporation in which Jerry Grimes is the sole shareholder. At the time of the purchase, the property was zoned "residential development" which, "according to the Walton County Zoning Ordinance, allows light industrial uses."
The complaint further alleges that, in response to a written application by the Grimeses, the Walton County Building Department issued a "Certificate of Zoning Compliance," which certified that the uses proposed by the Grimeses for the property complied "with all Walton County Zoning regulations." However, shortly after the "Certificate of Zoning Compliance" had been issued, several owners of land in the vicinity of the Grimeses' parcel appealed the Building Department's action to the Walton County Board of Adjustment. After a public hearing, the Board of Adjustment "voted unanimously to deny the issuance of the Certificate of Zoning."
Appellants then filed an action in circuit court, seeking review of the Board of Adjustment's decision. For reasons that are not entirely clear from the record, the parties to the first action (appellants, Walton County, the Board of Adjustment and the Board's members), through their attorneys, entered into a stipulation, pursuant to which they agreed that that action would be dismissed without prejudice; that the Board of Adjustment would reconsider the matter at its next regular meeting; and that the stipulation was not intended to prejudice in any way "[appellants'] right to judicial relief of the Board's decision on reconsideration of the zoning certificate."
A transcript attached to, and made a part of, the complaint reflects that, in due course, the matter was placed once again on the Board of Adjustment's agenda. However, the Board, by a unanimous vote, refused to reconsider the matter, as the parties had stipulated in the first action. Accordingly, appellants filed the present action.
The complaint is in two counts. However, both counts seek the same narrow relief--to compel the Board of Adjustment to live up to the agreement reached in the first action, and to reconsider its previous decision regarding the correctness of the Building Department's conclusion. The first count sought to do this by requesting a writ of mandamus; and the second count sought to do it by an "action to enforce a stipulation."
Some two weeks after a Clerk's Default had been entered against the individual defendants, who composed the Board of Adjustment, a "Petition for Leave to Intervene" was filed by twelve individuals. (Although no default had been entered against the two remaining defendants--Walton County and the Walton County Board of Adjustment--there is nothing in the record to indicate that either had filed any response to the complaint.) The Petition alleged (1) that the petitioners were "all homeowners in the residential neighborhood in which the [appellants] propose to operate their excavation business"; (2) that "operation of the excavation business in the ... neighborhood ... would involve the use of heavy equipment such as dump trucks, frontend loaders, and incinerators, which would cause excessive air pollution and noise ..."; (3) that "operation of the excavation business and the high frequency of heavy truck use on the unpaved roads in the ... neighborhood ... would cause travel ... to become even more dangerous ..., thereby increasing the risk of injury to children in the neighborhood"; and (4) that "operation of the excavation business in the neighborhood ... would cause a decline in property values, and economic injury, all to the detriment of [petitioners]." The Petition also contained the legal conclusion that "[a]s homeowners in the neighborhood in which [appellants] plan to operate their excavation business, [petitioners] will either gain or lose by the direct legal operation and effect of this court's judgment."
Over the objection of appellants, the trial court first granted the Petition for Leave to Intervene, and then allowed the intervenors to file a motion to dismiss the complaint, despite the fact that, apparently, at that point none of the defendants had filed any response to the complaint and, therefore, all were in default. The motion to dismiss argued principally "that the complaint...
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