Town of Stratford v. City of Bridgeport

• Citation: 377 A.2d 327,173 Conn. 303
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Decision Date: 26 July 1977
• Parties: TOWN OF STRATFORD v. CITY OF BRIDGEPORT.

Page 327

377 A.2d 327

173 Conn. 303

TOWN OF STRATFORD v. CITY OF BRIDGEPORT.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued May 3, 1977.

Decided July 26, 1977.

J. Roger Shull, Stratford, for appellant (plaintiff).

Samuel C. Derman, Deputy City Atty., Bridgeport, for appellee (defendant).

Before HOUSE, C. J., and LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, LONGO and SPEZIALE, JJ.

HOUSE, Chief Justice.

This appeal arises from the following circumstances: The plaintiff town brought an action in the Superior Court in Fairfield County alleging, in brief, that the defendant owned and operated the Igor Sikorsky Memorial Airport situated within the plaintiff town, that the defendant had recently acquired additional real estate in the immediate vicinity of the airport for the purpose of expanding it, and that the acquisitions were made in defiance of an injunction issued by the Superior Court in 1971 and were in violation of § 13b-43 of the General Statutes in that the defendant failed to obtain the approval of the plaintiff to make the acquisitions. By way of relief, the plaintiff sought temporary and permanent injunctions restraining the defendant from utilizing the newly acquired real estate, a declaratory judgment that any acquisition by the defendant for the purpose of expanding or improving the airport would require the plaintiff's approval, an order setting aside the conveyances, an adjudication that the defendant be held in contempt, and any other equitable relief to which it might be entitled.

The defendant pleaded in abatement that the Superior Court had "no jurisdiction over the above action since jurisdiction over the matters referred to in this complaint is lodged exclusively in the United States of America." The defendant asserted four reasons why the court had no jurisdiction. The first was that the defendant had purchased the additional land for clear and transition zones to protect the approach and departure of aircraft on the existing runways, in accordance with a grant agreement between it and the federal aviation administration (hereinafter referred to as FAA). The second was that under the provisions of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 (49 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1542) the federal government possesses and exercises complete and exclusive national sovereignty of the air space of the United States, which includes air space needed to ensure safety in the takeoff and landing of aircraft. The third was that insofar as § 13b-43 purports to regulate or prohibit the defendant's acquisition of clear and transition zones it is in conflict with the specific provisions of the Federal Aviation Act which reserves exclusive jurisdiction in this area to the United States and, accordingly, is illegal and void. The fourth is that if the injunction referred to in the plaintiff's complaint purports to regulate the acquisition and maintenance of clear and transition zones, then the injunction is illegal and void in that it seeks to regulate navigable air space in violation of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958.

The plaintiff pleaded a general denial to the allegations of the plea in abatement. After a hearing, the court sustained the plea and the present appeal was taken by the plaintiff from the judgment sustaining the plea.

The basic ratio decidendi of the court appears from its finding. It found that clear and transition zones are part of navigable air space because these zones are necessary to protect the approach and departure patterns of aircraft at airports, and that the federal government possesses complete and exclusive sovereignty over navigable air space, as provided by § 1108(a) of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. 49 U.S.C. § 1508(a). It then concluded that the regulation of navigable air space is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States government by virtue of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, that a determination of what constitutes an adequate interest in land for the establishment of clear and transition zones lies solely within the jurisdiction of the United States government acting through the FAA, and that the Superior Court is without jurisdiction to grant the plaintiff's prayer for relief because that prayer seeks to impose limitations and restraints upon access to navigable air space. The court expressly sustained the defendant's claim of law that "(t)he Superior Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain plaintiff's claims for relief because said claims involve an issue of access to navigable air space, and jurisdiction over this subject matter lies exclusively with the U.S. Government."

The plaintiff's principal assignment of error goes directly to a fundamental issue of federalism, as it pertains to the relationship between state courts and federal courts and state courts and federal law. The constitution of the United States, article III, § 1, states in part: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." In Federalist Paper No. 82, Alexander Hamilton commented on this provision: "This might either be construed to signify, that the supreme and subordinate courts of the union should alone have the power of deciding those causes, to which their authority is to extend; or simply to denote, that the organs of the national judiciary should be one supreme court, and as many subordinate courts, as congress should think proper to appoint; in other words, that the United States should exercise the judicial power with which they are to be invested, through one supreme tribunal, and a certain number of inferior ones, to be instituted by them. The first excludes, the last admits, the concurrent jurisdiction of the state tribunals: and as the first would amount to an alienation of state power by implication, the last appears to me the most defensible construction. . . . When . . . we consider the state governments and the national governments, as they truly are, in the light of kindred systems, and as parts of one whole, the inference seems to be conclusive, that the state courts would have a concurrent jurisdiction in all cases arising under the laws of the union, where it was not expressly prohibited."

Hamilton's view of state court jurisdiction has prevailed and has been observed since the establishment of the nation's constitutional government. An eminent constitutional...