Maine Turnpike Authority v. Brennan

• Citation: 342 A.2d 719
• Parties: MAINE TURNPIKE AUTHORITY et al. v. Joseph E. BRENNAN, Attorney General, State of Maine.
• Decision Date: 24 July 1975
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)

Page 719

342 A.2d 719

MAINE TURNPIKE AUTHORITY et al. v. Joseph E. BRENNAN, Attorney General, State of Maine.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

July 24, 1975.

Verrill, Dana, Philbrick, Putnam, & Williamson, by Roger A. Putnam, P. Benjamin Zuckerman, Portland, Frank E. Hancock, York, Pierce, Atwood, Scribner, Allen & McKusick, by Vincent L. McKusick, Daniel E. Boxer, Portland, for plaintiffs.

John M. R. Paterson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Doyle & Fuller, by John R. Doyle, Craig H. Nelson, Augusta, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD and DELAHANTY, JJ.

DELAHANTY, Justice.

The Maine Turnpike Authority (hereinafter the Authority) seeks a declaratory judgment concerning its right and power to add additional lanes to the Maine Turnpike. At issue is the construction of the Enabling Act under which the Authority is governed. We declare that the Authority's conduct in building additional lanes is without warrant in the provisions of the Enabling Act and is therefore forbidden. At the end of this opinion, in our mandate, we frame and render our formal and complete declaratory judgment.

The provenience of the present action may in large degree be ascribed to happenstance. In 1971 the Authority, pursuant to a recommendation of its consulting engineers, undertook a comprehensive program of improvements to the southernmost section of the Maine Turnpike. One of these improvements was the enlargement of the Turnpike from a four-lane road to a sixlane road by the construction of two additional lanes, with the aim of eventual expansion of the Turnpike to eight lanes. The Authority actually built several miles of new lanes and was continuing to build in order to finish its anticipated program.

At this point the State Department of Environmental Protection sought an opinion from the Attorney General as to whether the Authority's program and conduct in building additional lanes, and in expanding bridges to accomodate the additional lanes, were subject to the requirements of the Site Selection Law. See 38 M.R.S.A. § 481 et seq. The Attorney General answered the inquiry by an interdepartmental memorandum. The memorandum expressed the Attorney General's opinion that the Authority was indeed subject to the Site Selection Law. The memorandum further stated the opinion of the Attorney General that the Authority had exceeded the powers conferred in its Enabling Act by financing the building of the additional lanes out of revenues obtained from tolls.

Faced with the Attorney General's memorandum, the Authority sought a declaratory judgment to ascertain the proper extent of its powers under the appropriate laws and regulations. The Authority was joined in its action by the Maine National Bank and the First National Bank of Boston. These Banks were trustees of the toll revenues under the Authority's Trust Indenture. As trustees, the Banks had released trust moneys for the building of the additional lanes. The Attorney General was named as defendant in the declaratory judgment action. ¹ Subsequently, Donald M. Liddell qualified as an intervenor-defendant representing the interest of those bondholders who objected to the use of toll revenues for the building of additional lanes.

The case was presented to the Superior Court on an agreed statement of facts. Supplemantary testimony was taken at a hearing before the court. On agreement of all the parties, and with the concurrence of the Superior Court, the case was reported to the Law Court under M.R.Civ.P. 72(b).

Until the entry of an adequate judgment declaratory of its rights, the Authority has suspended the road construction at issue. Additionally, the Authority has stated that it will comply with the Site Selection Law in connection with future construction projects. The Attorney General, for his part, has made clear that the objections voiced in his memorandum related only to the expansion of the Turnpike by adding travel lanes or by expanding bridges. He did not question the Authority's interest in the installation of median barriers, the redesigning of shoulders and embankments, or the repaving and other maintenance aspects of the Authority's program.

Thus clarified, the issues presented to this Court reduce themselves to one basic necessary question: Is the Authority empowered by its Enabling Act to apply toll revenues either to build additional lanes or to expand turnpike bridges and overpasses to accommodate these lanes? We answer in the negative.

At the outset we must consider the propriety of the Authority's action under the Declaratory Judgments Act. See 14 M.R.S.A. § 5951 et seq. The Authority's concern about the legal status of its conduct arose from a memorandum of the Attorney General to one of the State Departments. This memorandum did not purport to be official action touching upon the Authority, though of course it may have formed an eventual basis for such action. But we do not think the Authority was obliged to passively await a complaint from the Attorney General or from the Department of Environmental Protection or any other official act of the State tending to enforce the State's view of the applicable law. The Authority viewed the very pronouncement and circulation of the memorandum as impairing the ability of the Authority to discharge what it conceived to be its proper functions and public responsibilities under its legislative mandate. See generally First National Bank of Boston v. Maine Turnpike Authority, 153 Me. 131, 155-56, 136 A.2d 699, 713 (1957). Since the Authority seeks a declaration of its rights relative to its basic statutory source, the Enabling Act of 1941, the Authority's present action appears well within the mainstream of the liberal policy of declaratory relief marked out and followed by this Court. See Berry v. Daigle, Me., 322 A.2d 320, 325 (1974) and cases cited therein.

Moreover, the prerequisite of justiciability is satisfied on the facts presented. Although the Declaratory Judgment Act expands the range of available relief, it does not relax the requirements of justiciability necessary to present the court with a judicable controversy. Berry, supra, 322 A.2d at 325. To establish a justicialbe controversy proper for a declaratory judgment, the complainant must establish a claim of right buttressed by a sufficiently substantial interest to warrant judicial protection. Id. at 326. Here, the Authority claims a right under its Enabling Act to build additional lanes and bridges. The Attorney General, in a colorably official, act, has opposed that right. That the Authority has a substantial interest in the proper construction of its Enabling Act and in the facilitation of Turnpike travel, we may take to be self-evident. Thus we are presented with a definite and concrete controversy touching the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. Aetna Life Ins. Co. of Hartford, Conn. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 240-41, 57 S.Ct. 461, 464, 81 L.Ed. 617, 621 (1937). The controversy is real and substantial; it admits of an immediate and definite determination of the legal rights of the parties; therefore the judicial function may be properly exercised although the adjudication of the rights of the litigants may not require the award of process or the payment of damages. Id. at 241, 57 S.Ct. at 464, 81 L.Ed. at 621.

Our discussion of the powers of the Maine Turnpike Authority necessarily must begin with the statute which gave life to the Authority, Priv. & Sp.L., Ch. 69 (1941) (hereinafter the Enabling Act). The Authority contends that the Enabling Act, by its own terms, provides for the interpretation and enlargement of the Authority's powers through the Trust Indenture subsequently entered into by the Authority and its bondholders. We disagree with this view of the Authority's basic charter rights and powers. Those rights and powers intrinsically derive from the statutes which called the Authority into existence. See City of Waterville v. Kennebec Water District,138 Me. 307, 318, 25 A.2d 475, 479 (1942). While the Authority is entitled to such incidental implied powers as are necessary to carry out its express powers and to vindicate its public purpose, the Enabling Act remains its basic organic law and the measure of its rights and powers. See State v. Fin & Feather Club, Me., 316 A.2d 351, 355 (1974).

Thus, § 4(a)(4) of the Enabling Act, headed 'Powers,' provides that the Maine Turnpike Authority shall have powers 'to construct, maintain, reconstruct and operate a toll turnpike from a point at or near Kittery in York county to a point at or near Fort Kent in Aroostook county.' Section 1 explains that the Authority is authorized and empowered to construct, operate and maintain a turnpike 'in order to facilitate vehicular traffic between the southwestern and northeastern sections of the state of Maine.' Section 11(c) requires that the tolls imposed by the Turnpike 'shall be so fixed and adjusted as to provide a fund at least sufficient . . . to pay: (1) the cost of maintaining, repairing and operating the turnpike; and (2) the bonds and the interest thereon, and all sinking fund requirements, and other requirements provided by the resolution authorizing issuance of the bonds or by the trust indenture as the same shall become due.'

The essence of the Authority's position in construing the above core provisions of the Enabling Act appears to be as follows: 1) that the furtherance of the legislative policy of facilitating vehicular traffic requires the Authority to be afforded a broad latitude in interpreting and applying its powers; 2) that the building of additional lanes may be justified within the Authority's powers 'to construct, maintain, reconstruct and operate a toll turnpike;' 3) that toll revenues may be used in building the additional lanes because the building of the lanes may be viewed as 'maintaining, repairing and operating the turnpike;' and 4) that in any event tolls...