This publish was authored by Matthew Loescher, Esq.
The Metropolis of Gautier granted David Vindich a permit to assemble a 1,410 sq. foot storage/workshop on his .76-acre lot. When the developing was practically achieved, Vindich’s neighbor, Martin Wheelan, filed a lawsuit throughout the Jackson County Chancery Courtroom, arguing the Metropolis’s selection was unlawful since Vindich actually sought a variance, which required a public listening to fairly than a developing permit. After a trial, the chancellor dismissed Wheelan’s claims, discovering that the Metropolis’s interpretation of the related ordinance was not manifestly unreasonable. The chancellor extra found that the developing was not a nuisance. Wheelan appealed, and the Courtroom of Appeals affirmed.
The doc mirrored that the Planning Price agreed that the Unified Development Ordinance was not clear nevertheless nonetheless voted 4 to a couple to reverse the Establishing Division’s selection and allow Vindich to assemble the workshop. The Establishing Division advocated for its interpretation that each one accent buildings combined collectively could not exceed 50 p.c of the home’s sq. footage. In a single different vote, the Metropolis Council accepted the Planning Price’s selection to allow Vindich to assemble the 1,400 sq. foot workshop. The Metropolis’s precise interpretation of the Unified Development Ordinance was absent from the doc; however, the Metropolis launched in its transient that it interpreted the phrase “vital developing house” to suggest the whole lot.
The courtroom docket well-known that the flaw throughout the Metropolis’s interpretation of Half 5.4.4.F led to absurd outcomes and rendered parts of the ordinance meaningless. Significantly, whereas the Metropolis’s interpretation of “vital developing house” would permit the home-owner to assemble accent buildings defending as a lot as fifty p.c of the “full lot,” the immediately earlier sentence of the ordinance restricted the principal development and all accent buildings combined to solely twenty-five p.c of the lot house. As a result of the twenty-five p.c of the lot is always decrease than fifty p.c of the lot, the twenty-five-percent limitation throughout the first sentence would always administration, and the Metropolis’s interpretation of the fifty-percent limitation would certainly not apply. Accordingly, the Metropolis’s interpretation of the phrase “vital developing house” renders that very phrase a nullity.
As a result of the courtroom docket held that the Metropolis’s interpretation of Half 5.4.4.F of its UDO was manifestly unreasonable, it reversed the judgment of the chancery courtroom docket with instructions to vacate the Metropolis Council’s order granting the developing permit.
Wheelan v Coty of Gautier, 2022 WL 325207 (MS 2/3/2022)