Last week, the Law Court issued its decision in
Beckford v. Town of Clifton, 2014 ME 156, which involved a proposal under a local land use ordinance to build and operate a five-turbine commercial wind energy project. Although the Clifton Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) affirmed the Planning Board’s grant of the permit, the Superior Court vacated, and an appeal by the developer to the Law Court followed.
The only matter addressed by the Law Court was whether the opponents of the project had timely appealed the ZBA’s decision to the Superior Court. The controlling statute, 30-A M.R.S. § 2691(3)(G), provides: “Any party may take an appeal within 45 days of the date of the vote on the original decision ….” The question before the Court was whether the 45-day period began on January 25, 2012, when the ZBA voted to deny the opponents’ appeal, or on January 30, 2012, when the ZBA voted to adopt its written decision. If the period began to run on January 30, the opponents’ appeal to the Superior Court was timely; if it began to run on January 25, their appeal was five days late.
The Court held that the appeal period began to run on January 25, and, therefore, the opponents’ appeal was late. Citing its longstanding rule that the failure to timely file an appeal is a fatal jurisdictional defect, the Court vacated the Superior Court’s decision and remanded the case to the Superior Court for the entry of an order dismissing the case. The majority opinion was written by Justice Hjelm, who was joined by Chief Justice Saufley and Justices Mead and Gorman; Justices Silver, Jabar, and Alexander dissented.
Given the language of Section 2691(3)(G), I believe the Court was correct in its conclusion that the opponents’ appeal was untimely. “So,” you might ask, “if you think the Court got it right, why do you care enough to write about the case?” My answer is simple – while I think the Court correctly determined that the appeal was untimely, I’m not so sure that the result is the “right” one.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current state of the law regarding the time limits applicable to administrative appeals in Maine is a mess. In her concurrence, the Chief Justice does an excellent job detailing all of the differing time frames applicable to administrative appeals as well as the many variations in the language used to trigger them. The result is considerable confusion and too many traps for the unwary to count. Although the recent amendment to the M.R.Civ.P. 80B should help eliminate some of the confusion, it does not fix every problem and it wasn’t even applicable to the situation in
Beckford. The Chief Justice summed up the confusion thusly, “When even those jurists who regularly apply and interpret the time frames set by the Legislature or by local ordinances cannot agree on their meaning or applicability, it is undoubtedly also difficult for the public and the Bar to do so.” I agree wholeheartedly, but my question is if the members of the Law Court can’t even agree on how to apply the deadlines in administrative appeals, why send appellants packing without any consideration of the merits of their appeals simply because they calculated the deadline incorrectly?
The Chief Justice ended her concurrence by noting that it would be a great benefit to the people of Maine if the Legislature were to undertake “a thorough review of the events that trigger the running of the time for appellate review for both state and municipal appeals to establish a single, consistent, and understandable triggering event and time frame for seeking appellate review.” That would certainly be an ideal solution, but I have another idea for the Law Court to consider – stop treating the untimely filing of a notice of appeal as depriving the courts of the jurisdiction to hear the appeals. The Indiana Supreme Court did just that only a couple of months ago in
In re Adoption of O.R., 16 N.E.3d 965 (Ind. 2014), in which the court noted the unfortunate tendency of courts (including itself) to mischaracterize procedural errors as defects in subject matter jurisdiction.
While I am mindful that the courts’ appellate jurisdiction is limited by statute, there is nothing in 4 M.R.S. § 105(3) (conferring limited appellate jurisdiction on the Superior Court) or in 4 M.R.S. § 57 (conferring jurisdiction on the Law Court) that says that appellate jurisdiction is conferred only to the extent that a party files its appeal on time. In fact, 4 M.R.S. § 57, itself directs the Law Court to eschew over-reliance on procedural niceties by providing that when the issues of law can be “clearly understood, they must be decided, and a case may not be dismissed by the Law Court for technical errors in pleading alone or for want of proper procedure if the record of the case presents the merits of the controversy between the parties.” Why treat the failure to file an appeal on time differently from other procedural errors?
By not treating an untimely appeal as depriving the court of subject matter jurisdiction, there would be room for Maine courts to address the merits of untimely appeals in certain cases. Clearly, given the interests of finality and the courts’ own institutional and other interests, limitations would have to be placed on the courts’ discretion in this regard – but that is something that could be handled through the promulgation of a new rule or two, possibly along the lines of the good cause and excusable neglect standards contained in M.R.Civ.P. 55(c) and 60(b). This would provide Maine courts with some needed flexibility and is consistent with both 4 M.R.S. § 57 and the Law Court’s oft-stated preference for cases to be decided on the merits.
