Land Development SALDO Requirement to Submit Plan Interference with Access to and Use of Property Standing to Bring Private Enforcement Action
Smith v. Ivy Lee Real Estate, LLC, PICS Case No. 17-1113 (Pa. Commw. June 27, 2017) Hearthway, J. (13 pages).
The Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code provided private cause of action to enforce alleged violations of a township's SALDO. Order of the trial court reversed.
Appellants, the Smith family, appealed from the order of the trial court denying their request for injunctive relief. Appellants owned land in Taylor Township. Appellee Ivy Lee Real Estate, LLC owned an adjacent parcel of property. Appellants commenced this action against Ivy Lee asserting, among other counts, a claim for injunctive relief. In support of their claim for injunctive relief, appellants alleged that Ivy League had engaged in construction activities that constituted "land development" under the township's SALDO; appellants further alleged that Ivy Lee had not submitted a land development plan as required by the SALDO and that Ivy Lee's plan did not conform to SALDO requirements. Appellants requested injunctive relief because Ivy Lee's construction activities allegedly interfered with appellants' access to and use of their property; appellant argued that they could bring a private SALDO enforcement action under 617 of the MPC.
The trial court held an evidentiary hearing, and issued an order and opinion denying appellants' request for injunctive relief, ruling that they did not have standing to enforce the SALDO pursuant to 617. The trial court held that 617 created a private cause of action solely for zoning violations, and noted that the township did not have a zoning ordinance. The trial court noted that 617 was contained in the subchapter of the MPC titled "zoning", and that all 617 cases involved zoning.
On appeal, appellants argued that the trial court erred in ruling that the MPC did not provide a private cause of action to enforce alleged violations of the SALDO, asserting that 617 allowing reference to a "violation of any ordinance enacted under this act" referred to the entire MPC, not just the subchapter on zoning. Thus, appellants argued that they had standing because the township's SALDO was enacted pursuant to the MPC.
The court agreed with appellant's interpretation of the phrase "this act" as referring to the MPC in its entirety, not just the zoning subchapter, and held that 617 permitted a private cause of action to enforce an alleged violation of a SALDO enacted pursuant to the MPC. The court noted that the MPC, including the zoning ordinance in particular, used other language such as "this article" to indicate an intent to apply to a specific portion of the MPC rather than the whole act. The court held that the trial court erred in allowing the title of 617's subchapter to control the meaning of the section in disregard for its plain language, and erred in considering the fact that 617 had only been applied to zoning cases, since there were no cases expressly limiting 617 to zoning. Finally, the court rejected Ivy Lee's argument that the MPC's provisions for a municipality's right to bring an action to enforce a SALD precluded a private cause of action, ruling that the language of those provisions were not inconsistent with 617.