Stewart v. Inhabitants of Town of Durham

• Decision Date: 14 October 1982
• Citation: 451 A.2d 308
• Parties: Kenneth STEWART et al. v. INHABITANTS OF TOWN OF DURHAM et al.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 308

451 A.2d 308

Kenneth STEWART et al. v. INHABITANTS OF TOWN OF DURHAM et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 7, 1982.

Decided Oct. 14, 1982.

Sayer & Golden, Michael Sayer (orally), Richard Golden, Lisbon Falls, for plaintiffs.

Linnell, Choate & Webber, G. Curtis Webber (orally), Auburn, for defendants.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and GODFREY, NICHOLS, ROBERTS, CARTER, VIOLETTE and WATHEN, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

Defendant Town of Durham ¹ appeals from an order of the Superior Court (Androscoggin County) enjoining the Town from enforcing its mobile home ordinance against the Stewarts. The Superior Court held that the ordinance, which excludes from the Town all mobile homes except those located in duly licensed mobile home parks, is unconstitutional in its entirety because of its broad "grandfather clause." In so doing, the Superior Court accepted the interpretation of that grandfather clause adopted by Durham officials. We conclude that the proper legal construction of the grandfather clause saves it and the rest of the ordinance from constitutional attack, and we therefore reverse the Superior Court's order.

In 1972, the Town of Durham adopted a comprehensive plan as a guide to the community's future development. At its annual town meeting, held on March 6, 1976, the Town adopted a mobile home ordinance. Section 6(c) of that ordinance states, "No person shall maintain and occupy a mobile home in the Town of Durham except in a duly licensed mobile home park." Section 4 of the ordinance, its grandfather clause, provides:

The provisions of this ordinance shall not apply to occupied mobile homes lawfully existing within the Town of Durham ... nor shall it apply to the replacement of lawfully existing mobile homes.

Appellees Kenneth and Nancy Stewart own a piece of land in Durham. Their lot is not within a mobile home park. In August, 1980, they applied for a building permit to move their mobile home onto their Durham land from its location in a Brunswick mobile home park. Their application was denied by Durham's building inspector and then by the Town's zoning board of appeals. The Stewarts thereupon sought relief in the Superior Court. The evidence produced there shows that ever since its enactment, the ordinance's grandfather clause has been applied broadly by the Durham selectmen and building inspector. Specifically, those town officials have interpreted the clause to allow the owner of a mobile home lawfully in Durham before the ordinance took effect 1) to keep his home where it was, 2) to replace it with a new mobile home on the same lot, 3) to sell it, together with the lot, to a new owner, or 4) to move it to another lot in Durham, not previously the site of a mobile home (providing that the new location otherwise met the requirements for residential use).

Before the Superior Court the Stewarts argued, among other things, that Durham's mobile home ordinance is inconsistent with the Town's comprehensive plan ² and violative of the equal protection and due process clauses of the United States and Maine Constitutions. ³ The court rejected their first argument, but held that the broadly construed grandfather clause rendered the ordinance unconstitutional, and enjoined the Town from enforcing the ordinance so as to prevent the Stewarts from moving their mobile home onto their lot in Durham. The Town has appealed the Superior Court's decision on the constitutional issue, and the Stewarts have cross-appealed on the comprehensive plan question. We sustain the Town's appeal and deny the Stewarts' cross-appeal.

I. Construing the Ordinance

In holding that the Durham mobile home ordinance is unconstitutional because of the breadth of its grandfather clause, the Superior Court implicitly accepted the interpretation given to that clause by Durham's selectmen and building inspector. In so doing, the court made an error of law. See LaPointe v. City of Saco, Me., 419 A.2d 1013, 1015 (1980) (meaning of terms in a zoning ordinance is a question of law for the court). It is true that contemporaneous construction of a law by its drafters or administrators is not to be lightly disregarded by a court. See Kelley v. Halperin, Me., 390 A.2d 1078, 1080 (1978). However, against that traditional rule of construction we must weigh two countervailing considerations: the fact that the plain language of the grandfather clause and the context in which it must be read support a narrower construction of its terms more readily than the expanded interpretation accepted by the Superior Court, and our conclusion that a narrow construction will enable us to avoid the constitutional difficulties identified below. An administrative construction of an ordinance or statute is never conclusive upon a court. See State v. York Utilities Co., 142 Me. 40, 44, 45 A.2d 634, 635-36 (1946). We decline to adopt the administrative construction put upon the grandfather clause in Durham's mobile home ordinance.

The grandfather clause exempts "occupied mobile homes lawfully existing within the Town of Durham" and the "replacement" of such homes from the requirement that mobile homes be confined to licensed mobile home parks. An "occupied mobile home" is a home actually being lived in--a home "settled" on a given piece of land, with the usual water, sewer, and electrical hook-ups. An "occupied mobile home," in fact, is best thought of as being integrated with the lot on which it is located. Words used in a statute are to be given their plain and natural meaning whenever possible. See Town of Arundel v. Swain, Me., 374 A.2d 317, 320 (1977). The terms used in the Durham grandfather clause, given their plain and natural meaning, call for an interpretation significantly narrower than that accepted by the Superior Court. The wording of the clause suggests that the owner of a mobile home occupied lawfully in Durham before the ordinance took effect should be allowed to keep it, to replace it with a new mobile home on the same lot, or to transfer it, together with its lot, to a new owner (as it is the home itself, not the owner, that is "grandfathered"), but not to move it to another lot within Durham's borders.

Looking beyond the wording of the grandfather clause itself, we note that a narrow construction of the clause is consistent with the overall purpose of the mobile home ordinance, while the broad reading tends to undermine that purpose. Applied as the Durham officials have applied it, the clause virtually guarantees that the number of mobile homes in Durham outside mobile home parks will never drop below the number of nonconforming uses in 1976, when the ordinance was enacted. Moreover, if all of the grandfathered mobile homes could without restriction be moved about within the geographical limits of Durham, there is a potential for further erosion of property values and of the Town's aesthetic character. Those possible consequences run counter to the acknowledged goals of the ordinance as a whole, ⁴ to preserve the aesthetic character of Durham and to protect property values. Each section of an ordinance should be read so as to harmonize with the entire legislative scheme of which it is a part. See Seven Islands Land Co. v. Maine Land Use Regulation Commission, Me., 450 A.2d 475, 480 (1982). Construing the grandfather clause to permit the maintenance, replacement, or sale of existing mobile homes only at their original locations in Durham best conforms to the objective of the ordinance as a whole to restrict mobile homes to mobile home parks after March 6, 1976.

We adopt this construction of the grandfather clause not only because it is the most plausible reading of the clause but also because it avoids the serious constitutional questions presented by the town officials' interpretation. "Courts must construe legislative enactments so as to avoid a danger of unconstitutionality .... The cardinal principle of statutory construction is to save, not to destroy." State v. Davenport, Me., 326 A.2d 1, 5-6 (1974). See also 82 Am.Jur.2d, Zoning & Planning § 68, at 500 (1976) ("where a zoning ordinance is susceptible of two different reasonable constructions, one of which will render the ordinance valid and the other render it invalid, the court will adopt the one which renders it valid"). This principle of statutory construction is fully consistent with the general rule that the courts are to give effect to legislative intent, see State v. Hussey, Me., 381 A.2d 665, 666 (1978), as it cannot be assumed that the drafters of the Durham mobile home ordinance intended their product to violate the constitution. In Clardy v. Town of Livermore, Me., 403 A.2d 779 (1979), we interpreted a Livermore ordinance differently from the way it had been interpreted by town officials in order to avoid the decision of a constitutional question altogether. Here, we adopt a different construction in order to avoid a close constitutional question, although we cannot entirely escape a discussion of the due process and equal protection issues raised by the Stewarts.

II. The Constitutional Questions

Properly construed,...