Union Pacific RR v. UTAH STATE TAX COM'N

Decision Date21 April 2000
Docket Number No. 980304, No. 970527, No. 981417.
Citation999 P.2d 17,2000 UT 40
PartiesUNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, Petitioner, v. UTAH STATE TAX COMMISSION, Respondent. Beaver County, Box Elder County, Cache County, Davis County, Iron County, Juab County, Millard County, Morgan County, Salt Lake County, Summit County, Tooele County, Utah County, Washington County, and Weber County, Intervenors. Union Pacific Railroad Company, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Utah State Tax Commission, Defendant and Appellee.
CourtUtah Supreme Court

Robert A. Peterson, Karen L. Martinez, Salt Lake City, for Union Pacific.

Jan Graham, Att'y Gen., John C. McCarrey, Michelle Bush, Asst. Att'ys Gen., Salt Lake City, for the Tax Commission.

Bill Thomas Peters, Salt Lake City, for the Intervening counties.

DURHAM, Justice:

¶1 This case arises from a dispute between Union Pacific Railroad Company ("UPRR") and the Utah State Tax Commission ("Tax Commission") over the valuation of UPRR's assets for ad valorem tax purposes for the tax years 1991 through 1994. Several Utah counties (the "Counties") in which UPRR does business were also parties to the dispute before the Tax Commission.

¶2 Dissatisfied with the Tax Commission's findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the Property Tax Division's (the "PTD") valuation, UPRR petitioned the Third District Court for review. That court dismissed UPRR's complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. UPRR subsequently filed a petition for judicial review with this court and appealed the district court's order dismissing UPRR's complaint. We consolidated the appeal and the petition and now hold that this court lacks jurisdiction because UPRR failed to timely file its petition for judicial review in both this court and the district court.

BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶3 UPRR is a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Pacific Corporation which owns transportation property in nineteen states including Utah. Each of the nineteen states in which UPRR operates values UPRR's property annually to determine the amount of state tax UPRR must pay. Utah's Tax Commission, through the PTD, assesses UPRR's property value for ad valorem tax purposes. Once the PTD determines the property value as a whole and allocates a portion to Utah, Utah's allocation is apportioned to individual counties in which UPRR does business, and the counties subsequently levy the ad valorem taxes against UPRR.

¶4 UPRR disagreed with the PTD's assessment of its taxable property values for the years 1991 through 1994 and appealed to the Tax Commission. Each of the parties, UPRR, the PTD, and the Counties, submitted an appraisal report to the Tax Commission. The Tax Commission held formal hearings and entered an order containing its findings of fact, conclusions of law, and final decision ("First Order") on March 18, 1997, concluding that the values contained in the PTD's appraisal were acceptable subject to certain adjustments. The Tax Commission stated that it would accept the PTD's final values after the PTD made the adjustments mandated by the Tax Commission.1 The Tax Commission's First Order was dated and signed, and contained the following notice:

NOTICE: You have twenty (20) days after the date of a final order to file a Request for Reconsideration with the Commission. If you do not file a Request for Reconsideration with the Commission, you have thirty (30) days after the date of a final order to file (a) A Petition for Judicial Review in the Supreme Court, or (b) A Petition for Judicial Review by trial de novo in district court. (Utah Administrative Rule R861-1A-5(P) and Utah Code Ann. §§ 59-1-601(1), 63-46b-13 et seq.)

¶5 On April 2, 1997, the Counties requested reconsideration of the Tax Commission's decision. Two days later, the PTD submitted its final appraisal values as mandated by the Tax Commission in the First Order, and in an April 9, 1997 letter, the PTD made a further adjustment. On April 9, 1997, the Tax Commission acknowledged receipt of the Counties' motion for reconsideration, allotted thirty days for the parties to respond, and took the matter under advisement. Shortly thereafter, on April 15, 1997, the Tax Commission issued a second order ("Second Order") accepting the PTD's adjusted values as provided in the April 4th and April 9th letters. The Second Order set forth the state allocation values assessed to UPRR property for the four years at issue and contained the same notice as the First Order, allowing twenty days to file for reconsideration and thirty days to file for judicial review.

¶6 UPRR filed a petition for reconsideration on April 30, 1997. Although unclear from the record, UPRR apparently sought reconsideration of the First Order. In an order issued on May 19, 1997 ("Third Order"), the Tax Commission stated that UPRR could not request reconsideration of the First Order because the twenty-day time limitation had elapsed, and affirmed its findings of fact and conclusions of law contained in the First Order. The Third Order also contained a notice. This notice, however, differed from the notice printed on the first two orders because it did not include the provision indicating that the petitioner had twenty days to request reconsideration of the Tax Commission's final order.2

¶7 In a May 23, 1997 order ("Fourth Order"), the Tax Commission again upheld its findings of fact and conclusions of law, this time in response to the Counties' April 2nd request for reconsideration. The Fourth Order included a notice identical to the one in the Third Order, enumerating only a thirty-day time period to file a petition for judicial review. ¶8 On July 17, 1997, fifty-five days after the Fourth Order was issued, UPRR filed a complaint and petition for trial de novo in the Third District Court. The Tax Commission moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On November 6, 1997, UPRR filed a separate petition for review with this court. We ordered a stay of the proceedings on November 24, 1997, pending the resolution of rehearing petitions filed in Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. v. Utah State Tax Commission, 953 P.2d 435 (Utah 1997).

¶9 On February 26, 1998, the Third District Court granted the Tax Commission's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, relying on the recent holding of this court in Evans & Sutherland. The district court did not address the issue of whether UPRR's petition for review was timely filed. After UPRR filed its notice of appeal, we consolidated UPRR's petition for review with its appeal of the district court's dismissal.

ANALYSIS

¶10 UPRR does not dispute that it filed its petition for review with the district court fifty-five days after the Fourth Order. UPRR argues, however, that the Tax Commission never issued a "final" appealable order, and thus UPRR was not required to petition either this court or the district court within the thirty-day period following the date of the Fourth Order's issuance. UPRR requests that we remand this case to the Tax Commission "for issuance of a final order." However, if any or all of the Tax Commission's orders were final, UPRR's petitions to both this court and the district court were untimely. We hold that, at a minimum, the Tax Commission's Fourth Order was the last final agency action in this case. Thus, UPRR failed to timely file its petitions for judicial review.

I. FINAL AGENCY ACTION

¶11 Utah Code section 78-2-2(3) bestows appellate jurisdiction to this court from final orders originating with the Tax Commission.3 See Utah Code Ann. § 78-2-2(3)(e)(ii) (1996). Section 78-2-2 also provides that "[t]he [Utah] Supreme Court shall comply with the requirements of Title 63, Chapter 64b, in its review of agency adjudicative proceedings." Id. Chapter 46b of title 63 of the Utah Code contains the Administrative Procedures Act. See id. §§ 63-46b-0.5 to -22 (1997 Supp. 1999). The section of chapter 46b relevant to this appeal states: "A party shall file a petition for judicial review of final agency action within 30 days after the date that the order constituting the final agency action is issued or is considered to have been issued under Subsection 63-46b-13(3)(b)."4 Id. § 63-46b-14(3)(a) (1997). Therefore, once a final order is issued, the aggrieved party has thirty days to file a petition for judicial review.5

¶12 "The Utah Administrative Procedures Act [Utah Code Ann. §§ 63-46b-0.5 to -22] does not specifically define `final agency action.'" Barker v. Utah Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 970 P.2d 702, 705 (Utah 1998). Our opinion in Barker, however, contains extensive guidelines.

¶13 Specifically, we held in Barker with regard to finality of agency actions, that:

Because of the nature of agency proceedings, final actions often take place seriatim, disposing completely of discrete issues in one order while leaving other issues for later orders. Such orders will be final as to any issue fully decided by that order....

Id. at 706 (emphasis added). In effect, we held that a "final agency action" refers to questions that have been "fully decided." We relied in Barker on two related definitions of the term used in federal and model state law.

¶14 First, we discussed the United States Supreme Court's definition of "finality" in Port of Boston Marine Terminal Ass'n v. Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic, 400 U.S. 62, 91 S.Ct. 203, 27 L.Ed.2d 203 (1970). The Supreme Court announced the following definition of "final agency action" with respect to the 1988 Administrative Orders Review Act:

[T]he relevant considerations in determining finality are whether the process of administrative decisionmaking has reached a stage where judicial review will not disrupt the orderly process of adjudication and whether rights or obligations have been determined or legal consequences will flow from the agency action.

Id. at 71, 91 S.Ct. 203.

¶15 Second, we extracted the following definition of "final agency action" from the 1981 Mo...

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