Long v. City of Glendale

• Decision Date: 29 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 1 CA-CV 03-0051.,1 CA-CV 03-0051.
• Citation: 93 P.3d 519,208 Ariz. 319
• Parties: John F. LONG, an Arizona resident, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF GLENDALE, a municipal corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Arizona Court of Appeals

93 P.3d 519

208 Ariz. 319

John F. LONG, an Arizona resident, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF GLENDALE, a municipal corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

No. -0051.

Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division 1, Department A.

June 29, 2004.

Cohen Kennedy, Dowd & Quigley, P.C. By Ronald Jay Cohen, Laura H. Kennedy, Phoenix, Attorneys for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Fennemore Craig, By Timothy Berg, Keith L. Hendricks, Theresa Dwyer, Phoenix, Attorneys for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

SNOW, Judge.

¶ 1 John F. Long appeals the trial court's dismissal of his suit against the City of Glendale. Long sued Glendale after the City decided to commercially develop property adjacent to its airport. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm in part, reverse in part and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶ 2 Twenty years ago, Long either sold or donated three parcels of property to Glendale for its airport. He conditioned his grant of parcel B-1, B-2 and B-3 on the City's use of the property for airport and municipal purposes. Each deed included an identical reversion clause providing a possibility of reverter to Long or his heirs if the City ceased to use some part of each parcel as its municipal airport and for other municipal purposes. The three deeds also contained an identical use restriction clause restricting the City's use of the property to airport and municipal purposes, but explicitly permitting improvement for the operation of an airport, such as "runways, terminals and any additional improvements or facilities assessory [sic] to" an airport.

¶ 3 In his complaint, Long contends that the City agreed to construct a second runway at the airport on parcel B-3 and that Long's donation of that parcel was based on this agreement. The City's recent 2001 lease to the Ryan Companies U.S., Inc. of property adjacent to the airport to pursue the commercial development of the property precludes the construction of a second runway on parcel B-3 due to "clear areas" that must exist around a second runway. Long alleged in his complaint that he did not realize that the City would not build a second runway on parcel B-3 until he learned of the City's lease to the Ryan Companies that would prevent such construction.

¶ 4 Long's complaint accordingly includes causes of action for: (1) specific performance enjoining the City from proceeding with the commercial development and thus precluding runway construction on parcel B-3; (2) promissory estoppel requesting similar relief; (3) an alternative count for equitable reformation of the deed to require that the City build a second runway on the parcel; (4) rescission of Long's donation of parcel B-3 to the City; (5) equitable resulting trust revesting the title to parcel B-3 in Long; and (6) quiet title to parcel B-3.

¶ 5 The trial court granted the City's motion to dismiss because it determined that Long's claims were barred by the statute of limitations.¹ It further determined that the City's use of the property did not trigger the reversion clause or violate the use restriction contained in the deed, and Long's complaint was barred, at least in part, by the statute of frauds. Because it found the resolution of these issues dispositive of the entire complaint, the court dismissed the complaint without individually addressing Long's claims. Long timely appealed. He argues that the trial court erred by ruling that the statute of limitations barred his cause of action, by interpreting the deed without taking into account extrinsic evidence of the parties' intent, and by determining that the statute of frauds precluded his claims.

ANALYSIS

I. Statute of Limitations

A. Constructive Notice

¶ 6 The City amended its airport plan at a public meeting in January 1998 and deleted the provision for a second runway. The court found therefrom that Long's claims against the City accrued in January 1998. It cited dicta in Cathedral of Joy Baptist Church v. Village of Hazel Crest, 22 F.3d 713, 719 n. 1 (7th Cir.1994), in which the court observed that potential claimants receive "constructive notice" of actions taken by a municipality at a municipality's open meetings. On appeal, the City also cites to Sousa v. Town of Coventry, 774 A.2d 812, 815 (R.I.2001), which could be read to adopt similar reasoning.

¶ 7 The court accordingly reasoned that because Long did not provide the City with notice of his claims until July 2001, his claims were barred by Arizona Revised Statutes ("A.R.S.") section 12-821.01(A) (2003) which requires that notice of a claim be given to a public entity within 180 days of claim accrual. The court further determined that because Long did not file his lawsuit until January 2002, his claims were barred by A.R.S. § 12-821 (2003) which requires that a lawsuit against a public entity be filed within one year of claim accrual.

¶ 8 Long, on the other hand, argues that the trial court erred in so finding because, pursuant to Arizona law, his claims against the City did not accrue until he discovered them.

¶ 9 Despite the dicta in Cathedral of Joy, and the case law from other states, we use Arizona law to evaluate the accrual of Long's claims against the City. The Arizona statute defining claim accrual against public entities very specifically provides: "[a] cause of action accrues when the damaged party realizes he or she has been damaged and knows or reasonably should know the cause, source, act, event, instrumentality or condition which caused or contributed to the damage." A.R.S. § 12-821.01(B) (emphasis added).

¶ 10 We interpret the words of a statute "according to the common and approved use of the language." A.R.S. § 1-213 (2002). To "realize" something is to "comprehend [it] fully or correctly." Webster's II New College Dictionary 922 (2001). The requirement that a claimant "realize" he has been damaged is inconsistent with the idea that claimants can be deemed to have notice of a claim as a matter of law regardless of their actual knowledge of the claim. One does not "realize" something because there is a legal presumption that he knows it.

¶ 11 We have previously stated that the restrictive time periods for bringing claims against public entities are not unreasonable precisely because such claims do not accrue until the claimant realizes he or she has been injured. The claimant must further discover "or reasonably should have discovered that the injury was caused by the defendant's conduct." See Flood Control Dist. of Maricopa County v. Gaines, 202 Ariz. 248, 254,

¶ 17, 43 P.3d 196, 202 (App.2002) (finding statutory limitations periods for bringing claims against governmental entities appropriately applied to actions for inverse condemnation). We continue to adhere to that interpretation of the accrual statute.

¶ 12 The City argues that the policy behind the open meeting law is furthered by holding members of the public accountable for the content of public meetings. The policy supporting the open meetings law, however, does not include attributing knowledge to every citizen of every action taken at every public meeting. Rather the policy is "to open the conduct of the business of government to the scrutiny of the public and to ban decision-making in secret." Cooner v. Bd. of Educ., 136 Ariz. 11, 16, 663 P.2d 1002, 1007 (App.1982) (quoting Karol v. Bd. of Educ., 122 Ariz. 95, 97, 593 P.2d 649, 651 (1979)). It thus does not serve the policy to deprive members of the public of claims they may have against a public entity before they may realize they have such a claim.

¶ 13 The City further argues that courts routinely impute knowledge of legal provisions to the public regardless of the person's actual knowledge of the law or legal procedure. See, e.g., Cooper v. Ariz. W. College Dist. Governing Bd., 125 Ariz. 463, 467, 610 P.2d 465, 469 (App.1980)

(stating that "all persons are presumed to know the contents of the statutory provision[s]"); Forum Dev., L.C. v. Ariz. Dep't of Rev., 192 Ariz. 90, 99 n. 4, 961 P.2d 1038, 1047 n. 4 (App.1997) (finding that taxpayers had constructive notice of their statutory right to appeal assessments). Imputing knowledge of the law to the public, however, is different than imputing knowledge to the public of all governmental action.

¶ 14 For some purposes the public may be deemed to have constructive knowledge through the existence of available public records or other means. However, while official records may give constructive notice of some facts, they do so only to those who are bound to search those records. Mountain States Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Kelton, 79 Ariz. 126, 130-31, 285 P.2d 168, 170-71 (1955) (explaining that records are constructive notice only to those bound to search for such records). The open meeting law does not compel the general public to know the content of every public meeting or search public records pertaining to those meetings. Thus, even presuming that the City complied with the open meeting law, when the City Council deleted the provision for a second runway in the 1998 airport master plan, such action was not alone sufficient to cause Long to "realize" that he had a claim against the City.

B. Issues of Fact

¶ 15 The City also argues that its decision to delete the second runway from its airport master plan was the subject of several newspaper articles and public notices and thus there can be no real issue of fact whether Long was "on notice" of the second runway's deletion back in 1998. However, even assuming that A.R.S. § 12-821.01 should be interpreted to attribute to Long knowledge that reasonable inquiry on his part would have disclosed, "[w]hen discovery occurs and a cause of action accrues are usually and necessarily questions of fact for the jury." Doe v. Roe, 191 Ariz. 313, 323, ¶ 32, 955 P.2d 951, 961 (1998) (citing Gust, Rosenfeld & Henderson v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 182 Ariz. 586, 591, 898 P.2d 964, 969 (1995)). Thus, Long's claims were not subject...