Justia Vermont Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Neighbors Barbara Supeno and Barbara J. Ernst appealed a superior court's decision to uphold the Town of Addison Development Review Board's (DRB) grant of certificates of occupancy for two detached decks and a conditional use permit for an enclosed deck to applicants Linda and John Carrigan for improvements to applicants' seasonal camp on Lake Champlain. At the heart of this dispute was a series of decks that applicants constructed on their property and the efforts of the Town to bring the decks into compliance with the current zoning bylaws. Applicants' seasonal camp was located on Lake Champlain in the Town of Addison's Shoreland Residential (SR) District. Applicants purchased their property in 1984 and shortly thereafter built an attached, uncovered deck on the west side of the camp, facing Lake Champlain, adding ten feet in length to the footprint of the camp. Applicants then replaced an existing concrete platform, retaining wall, and set of stairs located on a slope down to the lakeshore, and added some decking behind the wall. As a result, applicants arguably had two decks within the setback area. In 2003, applicants applied for and received a permit to build a roof over the uncovered deck that was attached to the west side of the camp. Applicants also enclosed the deck by adding walls. In 2010, applicants applied for and received a permit to construct a detached, "standalone deck" on the west side of the camp, abutting the now-enclosed attached deck. The permit application did not disclose the presence of the decking that applicants had placed behind the retaining wall when they reconstructed the concrete platform and stairs in the 1980s. In 2011, neighbors notified the ZA that the standalone deck violated section 2.3(F)(7)(a) of the bylaws, which limited the number of detached decks an applicant could construct within the SR District. They argued that the decking behind the retaining wall constituted a "deck" and that therefore the standalone deck on the west side of the camp was not allowed under the bylaws. Applicants removed the decking from behind the retaining wall to comply with the bylaws. The ZA later discovered that, when constructed, the standalone deck was in fact attached and advised applicants to cut through the connecting boards to create a freestanding structure. The DRB then granted a certificate of occupancy for this deck (the environmental court's affirmance of this certificate of occupancy was another issue on appeal). Neighbors filed this appeal, arguing that the environmental court erred in affirming the DRB's grant of certificates of occupancy for the detached decks and a conditional use permit for the enclosed deck. Neighbors also argued the actions of the ZA and DRB directly contravened state and local policies protecting sensitive shoreland areas and lakes. Upon review, the Supreme Court affirmed the grant of the certificates of occupancy and reversed on the grant of the conditional use permit. View "In re Carrigan Conditional Use and Certificate of Compliance, Certificate of Occupancy, Certificate of Compliance" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from a dispute between developer Killington/Pico Ski Resort Partners, LLC ("K/P") and the Highridge Condominium Owners Association regarding developer's proposal to construct additional units in the Highridge condominium development in Killington. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the trial court granted declaratory relief to the Association on the ground that the declaration of condominium did not authorize the original developer to add additional units unilaterally, and thus the alleged successor to the original developer's rights, K/P, also had no such right. After its review of the dispute, the Vermont Supreme Court concluded that K/P was the successor in interest to the original developer with respect to development rights, and was entitled to construct the proposed additional units under the declaration of condominium. View "Highridge Condominium Owners Assoc. v. Killington/Pico Ski Resort Partners, LLC" on Justia Law

Two taxpayers appealed a trial court judgment affirming a decision of the board of abatement of the Town of Pownal, which denied their request for tax abatement. The taxpayers sought abatement of the property taxes on several contiguous properties for the years 2005 through 2011. First, taxpayers argued that the Town's delinquent-tax collector erred in assessing interest and fees on the entirety of an overdue tax bill after refusing to accept a partial payment that taxpayers had proffered in 2011. Second, taxpayers argued that the listers had erroneously and without notice to taxpayers reclassified their property for several years, resulting in improperly inflated tax bills. Third, the taxpayers argued that one sewer-bond payment is applied to each parcel. Fifth, taxpayer Guntlow explained that a house site up to two acres around a house was subject to an exemption in the taxation calculus that was unavailable to taxpayers during the years when their property was misclassified. Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case the trial court with instructions to remand to the Board of Abatement, for a more detailed explanation of the reasons for its denial of taxpayers' request for abatement on the ground that the misclassification of their property over a course of years amounted to a manifest error or mistake, and its request for abatement on the ground that taxation of their .66-acre leach field from 2005 to 2010 as an individual property amounted to manifest error or mistake. In the alternative, the Board could hold a new hearing on those two issues. The Court affirmed in all other respects. View "Guntlow v. Town of Pownal Board of Abatement" on Justia Law

This dispute involved the parties' neighboring plots of land. Plaintiffs claimed that through adverse possession, they acquired several strips of land adjacent to their property: a triangular area used for parking, a small grassy knoll, and a narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the roadway leading to plaintiffs' house. These disputed areas were located within defendants' property. A dirt lane through the woods lies beyond the disputed areas to the south and is connected to the road leading to the properties. Defendants appealed the Superior Court's ruling in favor of plaintiffs on the adverse possession claim, arguing the court erred in determining: (1) that plaintiffs' predecessors-in-title did not abandon the property when it was foreclosed on; and (2) that plaintiffs' evidence was sufficient to show adverse possession of both a knoll and parking area for the requisite fifteen-year period under 12 V.S.A. 501. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court. View "Parker v. Potter" on Justia Law

The parties in this case met in 2002 or 2003 and had a romantic relationship. In August 2007, the pair bought a house in Orwell. Prior to the purchase, plaintiff had been renting an apartment within the house from the owners of the property, the Tricketts. After the sale, defendant moved in with plaintiff. The parties bought the house for $245,000: Defendant’s mother contributed $200,000, defendant paid about $4,300 in closing costs, and the Tricketts financed a $45,000 private mortgage to the parties. Defendant’s mother did not ask for a promissory note, and her contribution was a gift rather than a loan. In particular, the contribution was intended as a gift to defendant, not to plaintiff. Although both parties signed the promissory note to the Tricketts, plaintiff took responsibility for making those payments, and was supposed to pay the balloon payment on the mortgage in August of 2010. The property was titled to the parties as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. Sometime after the closing, plaintiff signed an indemnification agreement that expressly acknowledged that defendant paid $200,000 plus the closing costs, that plaintiff was solely responsible for the $45,000 mortgage debt, and that plaintiff would indemnify defendant for any default on that debt. Plaintiff testified that she always believed that each party had a fifty percent interest in the property, while defendant testified that his understanding was that the parties had interests in the property commensurate their respective contributions. The trial court expressly rejected plaintiff’s testimony and concluded that both parties understood that their interests were defined by their respective contributions to the purchase price. The parties’ relationship ended, and defendant moved out of the house in 2009. In February, he stopped paying the expenses for the property and ignored plaintiff’s requests for assistance. Plaintiff has rented out a portion of the house since April 2010, collecting $700 per month. As of the trial, plaintiff had earned $27,300 from renting the house. She did not share any of this income with defendant. Plaintiff did not pay the balloon payment on the mortgage, and in 2010, the Tricketts filed a petition for foreclosure. In November 2011, plaintiff filed for bankruptcy to avoid losing the property. Plaintiff’s mother helped her to redeem the property by borrowing $143,000 against the equity in her own home. Plaintiff paid toward the mortgage on her mother’s house used to finance the redemption of the parties' house, $56,691 to the Trinketts, $12,031 for past-due property taxes, and $71,722 to pay off a home equity loan. In August 2011, in the face of an inevitable foreclosure sale, the court ordered plaintiff to sell the house. Plaintiff did not comply with the order, and the court found plaintiff in contempt on that basis. In a partition action, plaintiff sought to keep the house and buy out defendant’s interest. Defendant wanted the property awarded to him so that he could sell it and then disburse the amounts allocated by the court to plaintiff. Neither party sought to divide the property into two lots. The property was appraised at $240,000. The parties submitted the matter to the court. Plaintiff challenged the partition order reflecting the trial court’s conclusion that defendant had an 81.7% interest in the home and for applying various setoffs for contributions to the maintenance of the home after the parties purchased it. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed the order. View "Currie v. Jané" on Justia Law

This case centered on a disputed permit for a wastewater system and potable water supply granted to applicants David and Martha Musto for a home on Lake Bomoseen. Next-door neighbor Carolyn Hignite appealed the environmental court's decision to deny her request to revoke the permit issued to applicants in 2009, and to dismiss her direct appeal of the permit. Applicants cross-appealed the environmental court's holding that neighbor had standing to appeal in either instance. Along with her brothers, Hignite was part owner of a lake property that has been in their family for sixty-two years. Applicants' property is a .38-acre lot on the western shore of the lake, which contained a single-story seasonal camp of about 960 square feet. In 2009, applicants submitted a permit application to the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to replace the camp's septic system and on-site water supply. On the permit application, applicants described the project as the "reconstruction of a 3 bedroom year-round single use family residence using a new wastewater disposal system and drilled bedrock water supply well." ANR issued the requested permit to applicants on March 30, 2009. In August 2009, Hignite filed a petition with ANR to revoke the permit, claiming that applicants submitted false or misleading information on the permit application regarding the number of bedrooms in the camp. ANR held a hearing in May 2010, and denied neighbor's petition to revoke the permit. Hignite subsequently appealed the permit to the environmental court in 2010, over a year after the permit was issued to applicants. Hignite also appealed ANR's denial of revocation in 2013. The environmental court reviewed both cases de novo but did not conduct a new hearing, instead basing its review on exhibits and testimony from the ANR hearing, as the parties stipulated. Hignite appealed the court's decision on both dockets. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed the court's holding in both of the neighbor's appeals. View "In re Musto Wastewater System" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed a superior court order concluding that defendant violated 13 V.S.A. 3701(c) by intentionally knocking down a tree that belonged to plaintiff and trespassed on plaintiff’s land, and granted plaintiff $1 in damages plus attorney’s fees and costs. On appeal, defendant argued: (1) that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that defendant violated the statute; (2) that nominal damages did not support an award of attorney’s fees; and (3) that the court abused its discretion in awarding attorney’s fees of $22,406 based on $1 of actual damages. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Evans v. Cote" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs’ family began renting a lakeside property 1949 and eventually purchased it in 1976. Throughout their lease and ownership of the Mahoney Lot, and by the terms of their deed, plaintiffs enjoyed the use of approximately seventy-five feet of lake frontage. The adjacent lot to the northeast (the Tara Lot) was owned by Vermont Catholic Charities, Inc. (VCC) from 1958 until 2006 when it was sold to defendant. During VCC’s ownership of the Tara Lot, VCC recognized the disputed boundary line where plaintiffs believed it to be and marked it with signs. In 2007, defendant filed an application to subdivide the Tara Lot and included in the application a survey showing its southerly boundary line cutting plaintiffs’ beach in half (the Disputed Portion). In response to defendant’s development application, plaintiffs filed a complaint to quiet title in December 2007. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss in January 2008, which the trial court granted, but did not file an answer or counterclaim, nor did it assert affirmative defenses. The Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ claim that they had acquired the land by adverse possession and remanded to the trial court for further development of the factual record to determine whether VCC’s use of the property qualified for the exemption. On a second appeal to the Supreme Court, plaintiffs argued that the trial court erred in holding that plaintiffs’ suit to quiet title and defendant’s unilateral grant of permission for plaintiffs to use the disputed land tolled the statute of limitations on their adverse possession claim, that 12 V.S.A. 462 did not apply to acquiescence claims, that the trial court erred in determining that plaintiff’s predecessors did not acquire the property by acquiescence prior to 1949 when Camp Tara bought the property, and that, as a result of erroneous fact finding, the trial court failed to correctly determine the time during which the statute of limitations for adverse possession ran in plaintiffs’ favor. Though its reasoning was different in certain aspects, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court. View "Mahoney, et al. v. Tara, LLC" on Justia Law

Thirteen Town of Williston residents appealed the Superior Court, Environmental Division’s grant of a discretionary permit to All Metals Recycling, Inc., to establish an outdoor storage area and install a scale and scale house. The discretionary permit allowed All Metals to continue operating a previously unpermitted scrap-metals recycling business in Williston. Finding no abuse of discretion, the Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court's decision. View "In re All Metals Recycling, Inc." on Justia Law

In consolidated appeals, the Supreme Court reviewed rulings by the environmental and civil divisions concerning a subdivision application for a property located within a residential development in the City of Burlington. Appellants’ principal contention was that the courts erred in concluding that the subdivision had the requisite access to a public road. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgments. View "Regan v. Pomerleau, DeForest Realty, Inc. and City of Burlington" on Justia Law