South Easton Neighborhood Ass'n, Inc. v. Town of Easton

• Decision Date: 03 June 2005
• Docket Number: No. 120,120
• Citation: 387 Md. 468,876 A.2d 58
• Parties: SOUTH EASTON NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION, INC., et al. v. TOWN OF EASTON, MARYLAND, et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

876 A.2d 58

387 Md. 468

SOUTH EASTON NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION, INC., et al. v. TOWN OF EASTON, MARYLAND, et al.

No. 120, September Term, 2004.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 3, 2005.

Reconsideration Denied July 14, 2005.

Michael J. Jacobs (Melanie J. Barney of Jacobs & Barney, on brief), Easton, MD, for appellants.

Christopher B. Kehoe (Alexis E. Kramer of Ewing, Dietz, Fountain & Kehoe, P.A. on brief), Richard A. DeTar (Demetrios G. Kaouris of Miles & Stockbridge, P.C., on brief), Easton, MD, for appellees.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL, BATTAGLIA and GREENE, JJ.

HARRELL, J.

This case began with a request by Shore Health Systems, Incorporated ("SHS"), operator of the Easton Memorial Hospital in Easton, Maryland (the "Hospital"), to expand the Hospital's emergency room facilities. A prerequisite for construction of the planned expansion was the closure and conveyance to SHS of the roadbed of Adkins Avenue, a public street of the Town of Easton ("Town"), an incorporated municipality. The closure and conveyance would allow the new facility to be built across the existing public right-of-way.

A hearing was held by the Town Council to consider concurrently the proposed closure of Adkins Avenue and a zoning amendment for the proposed Hospital expansion. SHS claimed that the existing Hospital was designed for less than one-half of the current patient flow. Construction over the street bed was asserted as the only viable expansion alternative for the increased need for emergency room services. The South Easton Neighborhood Association, Inc. ("SENA") opposed the closing of Adkins Avenue, offering two main arguments: (a) it would leave local neighborhood residents without a safe alternative to access downtown Easton; and (b) the existing use of Adkins Avenue by the public foreclosed the Town's ability to close the street and convey the street bed to SHS. On 5 January 2004, the Town Council enacted Ordinance No. 466, closing Adkins Avenue and authorizing the conveyance to SHS of the lion's share of the street bed.

SENA filed in the Circuit Court for Talbot County a two count petition against the Town, generally seeking to enjoin the closure and transfer. The first count sought a declaration, pursuant to the Declaratory Judgment Act, §§ 3-401, et. seq. of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article of the Maryland Code, that Ordinance No. 466 exceeded the statutory authority granted to the Town Council under Article 23A, § 2(b)(24) of the Maryland Code. The second count sought judicial review of the Town Council's action as if it were reviewable as the final action of an administrative agency or body.

At a motions hearing on 30 July 2004, the Circuit Court orally granted summary judgment to the Town and SHS (the latter having intervened as a party defendant), indicating its intention to declare Ordinance No. 466 to be a valid exercise of the authority granted to the Town by Article 23A, § 2(b)(24). In the judgment entered on 3 August 2004, the Circuit Court declared Ordinance No. 466 lawful and, with respect to SENA's petition for judicial review, affirmed the Town Council's decision to close and convey Adkins Avenue. SENA's post-judgment motions were denied.

SENA appealed to the Court of Special Appeals. We granted a writ of certiorari, on the petition of SHS and the Town (collectively described here as Appellees)¹ before the intermediate appellate court could consider the appeal (see § 12-201 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article, Md.Code (1973, 2002 Repl.Vol.) and Maryland Rule 8-302) to decide the following questions, which we re-order to facilitate our analysis:

I. Whether the Town, in authorizing the closing and conveyance to private parties of an actively used public road, violated its fiduciary responsibilities under Maryland law with respect to that public road and failed to meet its burden of proof as a fiduciary for the challenged closing of an actively-used public street.²

II. Whether the requirement in Section 2(b)(24) of Article 23A that municipal property may be conveyed when the legislative body determines that "it is no longer needed for any public use" prohibits a municipality from conveying public property to a private person or entity if a limited minority of public uses the public property for convenience.

III. Whether the Town properly determined that closing Adkins Avenue to enable SHS to construct a new emergency care facility promotes a public benefit.

IV. Whether SENA submitted sufficient evidence of judicial bias to require Judge Horne to recuse himself from deciding this case.

For reasons to be explained, we shall affirm the judgment of the Circuit Court.

I.

Further judicial review of the Circuit Court's order upholding the Town Council's decision to close Adkins Avenue cannot be maintained as an action for judicial review of an administrative agency's decision. Our review here shall be directed to the Circuit Court's declaratory judgment, an appealable final order.³

II.

The Hospital lies within a Commercial-Medical Zoning District ("C-M Zone")⁴, established in 1993 and last amended by Town ordinance in 1998. The Hospital's main campus bears the address 219 South Washington Street. The campus is bordered on the north and south by Biery Street and West Earle Avenue, respectively, and on the west by Adkins Avenue. Adkins Avenue is approximately nine hundred feet long and runs in a north/south direction, connecting Biery Street to Earle Avenue. Adkins Avenue is forty feet wide at its northern terminus with Biery Street and fifty feet wide at its southern terminus with Earle Avenue.

The Hospital is wholly-owned by SHS, a Maryland non-profit, non-stock charitable corporation providing emergency, diagnostic, and clinical medical care on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, principally through two hospitals—the Hospital and Dorchester General Hospital in Cambridge, Maryland, as well as other facilities. Other than the two hospitals operated by SHS, there are no other hospitals in Talbot, Dorchester, Queen Anne's or Caroline Counties.

The Hospital Emergency Room (the "Emergency Room") was designed in 1983 to accommodate approximately 13,000 visits annually. At the time of the Town Council meeting in October 2003, the Emergency Room was receiving approximately 41,000 visits per year. Estimates supplied by SHS indicated that approximately 50,000 patients would present at the Emergency Room by the year 2015, based on population growth and demographic progression.

On 20 October 2003 the Town Council held a joint public hearing to consider, among other things, the proposed amendment to the C-M Zone to accommodate the Hospital expansion. In its request, SHS represented to the Town that a prerequisite to the construction of the expanded Emergency room was the closure and conveyance of Adkins Avenue to SHS. SHS proposed expanding the Hospital facility across the street bed and onto lots SHS controlled on the opposite side of Adkins Avenue. Title to the street bed was to be transferred to SHS. The record contains a letter from the Chairman of the Town's Planning and Zoning Commission and a Town staff report, both of which recommended approval of the closure of Adkins Avenue and propose no other or a future public use or purpose for the street bed. SHS submitted a traffic study showing that only 5-6 cars per hour drove the length of Adkins Avenue during peak travel periods. (Figure 1 depicts a not-to-scale drawing of the proposed Emergency Room expansion across the bed of Adkins Avenue).

SENA purported to be acting at the Town Council hearing on behalf of area residents in its opposition to SHS's requests.⁵ Wye Avenue, which runs parallel to Adkins Avenue, was alleged to be an impractical alternative for public ingress and egress because of street congestion, pedestrian use, and a lack of off-street parking. After submitting petitions supporting that Adkins Avenue be retained as a much-desired public right of way by the local residents, SENA argued that the Town lacked the legal authority to close Adkins Avenue because the on-going public use of Adkins Avenue, to any degree, foreclosed the Town's discretion to close the street under Article 23A, § 2(b)(24) of the Maryland Code.⁶ On 3 November 2004, the Town Council approved the closure of Adkins Avenue. On 5 January 2004, the Town Council enacted Amended Ordinance No. 466 and conveyed the relevant portion of the street bed to SHS. The Amended Ordinance authorized:

(1) closing Adkins Avenue and conveying a portion of the bed of that street to SHS as requested by it will serve a public purpose and benefit, namely, facilitating the provision of emergency and outpatient care services to the residents of the Town, Talbot County and surrounding counties; and (2) closing the remaining portion of the bed of Adkins Avenue to the Temple [⁷] is appropriate since no public purpose is served by maintaining that portion of Adkins Avenue as a public street.

The Ordinance also incorporated by exhibit a new boundary line revision plat ("McCrone Plat") submitted by SHS. The McCrone Plat showed that SHS and the Temple, the sole property owners abutting Adkins Avenue, would receive the streetbed, which was captioned on the McCrone Plat as "to be abandoned."

Ordinance No. 466 incorporated a statement of the Town Council's Findings of Fact. These findings included: 1) Adkins Avenue is used as a convenience by area residents in lieu of Wye Avenue; 2) SHS would maintain a means of access of transit between Earle Avenue and Biery Street in the event that an emergency would close access to Wye Avenue and South Washington Street; 3) Town Charter Article II § 17-A (3)⁸ authorized the Town Council to close public streets; 4) closing a portion of Adkins Avenue was in the best interest of the public in providing improved emergency medical services to the Town; 5) the Hospital would use approximately 250 feet of the 900...