Town of North Berwick v. Jones

• Decision Date: 17 December 1987
• Citation: 534 A.2d 667
• Parties: TOWN OF NORTH BERWICK v. Elwood JONES et al.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 667

534 A.2d 667

TOWN OF NORTH BERWICK v. Elwood JONES et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Nov. 2, 1987.

Decided Dec. 17, 1987.

Geoffrey H. Hole (orally), Catherine O'Connor, Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson, Portland, for plaintiff.

Dana E. Prescott (orally), Robert H. Furbish, Smith & Elliott, Saco, for defendants.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and NICHOLS, ROBERTS, WATHEN, SCOLNIK and CLIFFORD, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

In this enforcement action brought by the Town of North Berwick against defendant lot owners for filling and grading within 250 feet of an alleged watercourse in violation of the Town's ordinances, the Superior Court (York County) declared, in favor of defendants, that no watercourse ever existed on their lot and that as a result the Town's ordinances did not restrict their filling and grading it. On the Town's appeal, we hold that the unappealed decision by the Town's Planning Board that a watercourse did in fact exist on defendant's lot, by principles of collateral estoppel, precludes relitigation of that issue in this subsequent Superior Court enforcement action. Consequently we vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

On August 2, 1982, the Town issued a notice of zoning violation alleging that Elwood Jones ¹ was improperly filling and grading his lot within 250 feet of a watercourse. On August 25, 1982, Jones appeared, with counsel, before the Town's Planning Board to contest the notice and claimed that the Town was "without jurisdiction" to control his filling activities because no watercourse existed on the lot. Several witnesses made presentations to the Board, including the Town's site evaluator, the Town's code enforcement officer, and a geologist hired by Jones. After argument by Jones's counsel, the Board tabled action on the question whether a watercourse existed on the lot until the next meeting to be held on September 8, 1982. At that time, after some discussion, the Board by unanimous vote decided that

a watercourse does or did exist on [the Jones lot] prior to fill activity.

Based on the following:

1. Dictionary definition of a watercourse.

2. Testimony from citizens.

3. Testimony from the North Berwick Site Evaluator.

4. Examination of aerial photographs.

5. Personal examination of the site.

Because of the Board's determination that a watercourse existed on the lot, the lot came within the Town's resource protection district. ² At the same meeting, as a consequence of that determination, the Board applied to Jones the zoning restrictions against filling within a resource protection district and issued him a conditional use permit requiring him inter alia to construct within 30 days a swale of sufficient size and contour to resemble closely the original watercourse. Even though the Town's zoning ordinance gave Jones the right to appeal the Planning Board's decision within 30 days to the Town's Board of Appeals, and even though by statute Jones had the further right to appeal an adverse ruling by the Board of Appeals to the Superior Court, see 30 M.R.S.A. §§ 2411(3)(F), 4963(1) (1978 & Supp.1987), he at no time took any action to obtain direct appellate review of the Planning Board's decision.

Subsequently the Planning Board determined that Jones had not fully complied with the conditional use permit, notified Jones that he was in violation of the permit, and asked that he appear at its November 24, 1982, meeting. At that meeting, the Board extended the deadline for Jones's construction of the swale until December 24, 1982. At its January 12, 1983, meeting, the Board again determined that Jones had not complied with the terms of the conditional use permit.

In June 1983 the Town filed the complaint in the present action seeking civil penalties against Jones for violation of the Town's zoning ordinance and an order requiring him to comply with the terms of the conditional use permit. Jones moved for summary judgment on the ground that the Town had no "jurisdiction" over the filling because no watercourse existed on the lot. Also, in a supplemental pretrial memorandum, Jones raised the same factual issue of the existence of a watercourse on his property. The Superior Court denied Jones's summary judgment motion and, after a pretrial conference, allowed the Town to file a summary judgment motion alleging that Jones was precluded from relitigating the watercourse issue by the fact he had not appealed the Planning Board's September 8, 1982, determination that a watercourse did in fact exist. On February 13, 1985, the Superior Court denied the Town's motion for summary judgment on the watercourse issue, holding that the normal consequences of failing to appeal the Planning Board decision should not be applied against Jones because he and the Town had engaged in subsequent settlement negotiations.

Following a bench trial in February 1986, at which the principal issue was the watercourse question, the Superior Court entered judgment for defendants. The court, on the evidence presented to it, found that no watercourse existed on the lot, thereby eliminating the Town's authority to enforce against the lot owners the ordinance restrictions on filling and grading within 250 feet of a watercourse. The Town appeals from that judgment. The Town's appeal challenges the correctness of both the Superior Court's decision on the merits of the watercourse issue and also its earlier denial of the Town's motion for summary judgment on the ground of issue preclusion. ³ See M.R.Civ.P. 73(a). We reach only the second of the Town's challenges.

It is well-settled law that an issue of law or fact litigated and decided in a valid, final court judgment is conclusive in a subsequent court action between the same parties. Sevigny v. Home Builders Ass'n of Maine, Inc., 429 A.2d 197, 201-02 (Me.1981); Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 27 (1982). That form of res judicata called "collateral estoppel" or "issue preclusion" "prevents the reopening in a second action of an issue of fact actually litigated and decided in an earlier case." Beegan v. Schmidt, 451 A.2d 642, 644 (Me.1982). The question presented here, going beyond that well-settled law, is whether a final adjudication in an administrative proceeding before a quasi-judicial municipal body has the same preclusive effect as a final adjudication in a former court proceeding. We answer that question in the affirmative, in the circumstances of the case at bar.

Section 83 of Restatement (Second) of Judgments (1982) declares that, in absence of a contrary statutory provision, an adjudicative determination of a legal or factual issue by an administrative tribunal has the same effect of...