Town of Lebanon v. Woods

• Decision Date: 24 November 1965
• Citation: 215 A.2d 112,153 Conn. 182
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: TOWN OF LEBANON v. John H. WOODS. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 112

215 A.2d 112

153 Conn. 182

TOWN OF LEBANON v. John H. WOODS.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Nov. 24, 1965.

Charles Alfano, Suffield, with whom, on the brief, was Paul M. Palten, Hartford, for appellant-appellee (defendant).

Robert C. Leuba, Norwich, with whom was Allyn L. Brown, Jr., Norwich, for appellee-appellant (plaintiff).

Before KING, C. J., and ALCORN, SHANNON, HOUSE, and MURPHY, JJ.

KING, Chief Justice.

On November 6, 1961, the defendant purchased a tract of land of about 400 acres in the town of Lebanon. His purpose was to establish a development consisting of some 1060 houses, which were to range in price from $7950 to $10,500 and were to be built on lots of approximately one-quarter acre each. The defendant chose Lebanon for his development because, at the time he purchased the land, the town was without zoning. Subsequently, effective April 16, 1962, Lebanon did adopt zoning and subdivision regulations pursuant to chapters 124 and 126 of the General Statutes. The zoning regulations, inter alia, established, with certain exceptions obviously inapplicable to the defendant's property, one acre as the minimum lot size throughout the town. After the adoption of the zoning and subdivision regulations the defendant built fourteen houses on lots of less than one acre in sections 3 and 4 of his development. ¹

The town of Lebanon brought this action seeking, inter alia, (1) an injunction restraining the defendant from proceeding further with his development unless and until the subdivision and zoning regulations were complied with and (2) a mandatory injunction compelling the defendant to remove the fourteen houses erected on lots which did not conform to the zoning regulations. ² The court granted an injunction restraining the defendant from proceeding further with the development until he complies with the zoning and subdivision regulations but refused to grant a mandatory injunction ordering the removal of the fourteen houses already erected. From this judgment the defendant appealed and the plaintiff took a cross appeal.

I

The defendant's first basic claim is that the zoning regulations, ³ which were designated as 'interim', are invalid for two reasons. The first reason is that there is no statutory authority conferred on a municipality to enact 'interim' zoning regulations. Section 8-2 of the General Statutes (as amended, in ways immaterial to the present controversy, in 1959 and by No. 569 of the Public Acts of 1961), which authorizes the zoning commission of a municipality to adopt zoning regulations operative within the limits of that municipality, contains no requirement with respect to the duration of those regulations. Indeed, all zoning regulations are in a sense 'interim' because they can be amended at any time, after proper notice and subject to certain limitations. General Statutes § 8-3. The fact that the regulations in question were designated as 'interim' does not make them invalid, nor does it strengthen the defendant's position. Taylor v. Shetzen, 212 Ga. 101, 102, 90 S.E.2d 572; 58 Am.Jur., Zoning, § 137. As pointed out in the preamble to the interim regulations, they were intended to be operative only until such time as more complete regulations could be formulated and adopted.

The second reason for claiming the regulations invalid is that they were not adopted with reference to a 'comprehensive plan' as required by § 8-2 of the General Statutes. A comprehensive plan is to be found in the zoning regulations themselves. Couch v. Zoning Commission, 141 Conn. 349, 355, 106 A.2d 173; Mott's Realty Corporation v. Town Plan & Zoning Commission, 152 Conn. 535, 540, 209 A.2d 179; Corsino v. Grover, 148 Conn. 299, 313, 170 A.2d 267, 95 A.L.R.2d 751; Levinsky v. Zoning Commission, 144 Conn. 117, 123, 127 A.2d 822. It is 'a general plan to control and direct the use and development of property in a municipality * * * by dividing it into districts according to the present and potential use of the properties.' Miller v. Town Planning Commission, 142 Conn. 265, 269, 113 A.2d 504, 505; State v. Huntington, 145 Conn. 394, 399, 143 A.2d 444.

The town of Lebanon is a sparsely settled rural community. It has no public water or sewerage system, and the defendant planned a community water system for his development. On October 1, 1961, Lebanon was almost exclusively residential. It had 750 dwellings and nine small commercial or mercantile establishments, one of which was a resort hotel. The zoning regulations disclose a comprehensive plan imposing lot area, building placement and minimum living space requirements on all property in the town as a whole except that special and less drastic requirements are made applicable to 'seasonal' ⁴ dwellings if they are equipped with approved water and sewage disposal systems and are located within 500 feet of the high-water mark of any pond, lake or other body of water. While the trial court treated the regulations as dividing the town into two districts, it is probably more accurate to treat them as creating one district covering the entire town with liberalized requirements for dwellings falling within the 'seasonal' property classification.

Obvious purposes of these regulations are to prevent the overcrowding of land, to allow space for adequate private water and sewerage systems, and, in the case of residence properties, to provide for adequate living area. All these are permissible zoning objectives under § 8-2 of the General Statutes.

The defendant, as a further claim of invalidity based on a failure of the zoning regulations to conform to a comprehensive plan, stresses the obvious fact that, although these regulations, as already pointed out, control minimum lot size and the placement of buildings on property as well as the minimum living areas of residential property, they contain no regulation restricting the activities which may be pursued on any property in the town. ⁵ The commission may have assumed that the town would remain residential during the life of the interim regulations. But in any event the regulations, under § 8-2, must conform to a comprehensive plan as we have defined the term in cases such as Miller v. Town Planning Commission, supra, and State v. Huntington, supra.

Our definition of a comprehensive plan, already quoted embraces two different types of regulations governing the use or utilization of property. One type concerns the placement of structures on property. This can properly be controlled by regulations prescribing minimum lot size, setback and side-yard provisions, all of which are found in the Lebanon regulations. The other type governs the activities or enterprises which are permitted to be conducted on property, that is, the use, in the more restricted sense of the word 'use' which may be made of property. These can properly be controlled by regulations establishing residential, mercantile, industrial and other districts. A good comprehensive plan would regulate the use or utilization of property in each respect. Nothing can be found in the Lebanon regulations, however, which controls this second type of use. Thus the crucial question on this branch of the case is whether this deficiency is so serious as to render all of the zoning regulations wholly void and unenforceable and to leave Lebanon with no zoning whatsoever.

Whether or not zoning regulations conform to a comprehensive plan, as we have defined it, must depend in large part on the character of the locality for which they are designed. Manifestly a comprehensive plan of zoning adequate for a city such as Hartford must be much more complex than one adequate for a small, rural, almost wholly residential community such as Lebanon. The zoning commission, in the enactment of zoning regulations under § 8-2, was a municipal legislative body. As such it was clothed with a liberal discretion as to what detail would be necessary to constitute an adequate comprehensive plan for Lebanon within the statutory authority under which the commission acted. '[A] zoning commission's decision cannot be upset by a court merely because the court feels a different classification might have been preferable.' DeForest & Hotchkiss Co. v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 152 Conn. 262, 267, 205 A.2d 774, 777. The mere fact that the regulations obviously would have been improved had they contained provisions governing in more detail the future development of the town and protecting the town against the possible indiscriminate intrusion of business, mercantile or industrial enterprises would not, under the circumstances of this particular case, including the rural, sparsely populated, almost wholly residential character of the town and the absence of evidence of any threat of such commercial intrusion, justify this court in holding the entire regulations void and unenforceable for failure to manifest a permissible comprehensive plan.

A subordinate claim of invalidity is predicated on a failure of the interim zoning regulations to divide the town into districts of defined area and boundaries. This is not necessarily required by § 8-2, the language of which is permissive rather than mandatory. The case of State v. Huntington, supra, on which the defendant relies, holds that if such area districts are to be established, they must be described with sufficient precision to be reasonably ascertainable. This is but an application of a basic principle of zoning, which is, that every owner of property located in a town which has adopted zoning is entitled to be able to ascertain, with reasonable certainty, what uses he may legally make of any portion of his property. Leveille v. Zoning Board of Appeals, 145 Conn. 468, 473, 144 A.2d 45. From this basic principle it follows that zoning regulations must contain (a) adequate information for the determination of the uses permitted and prohibited in each district and (b) adequate information for the determination of...