Land Use/Zoning Litigation Win
If you have received a violation notice for your property and you do not believe that your property condition violates any law, ordinance, regulation, etc., then JPB Law may be able to assist you.
JPB Law's client, a private property owner, was sued by the government in the District Court of Maryland for an alleged violation of local law. The government initiated a lawsuit for injunctive and other relief because the government amended its Code to ban a certain type of fence/wall that was characterized as an “eyesore” by local elected officials. The government was asking the Court to order our client to remove its barriers from its private property, even though the barriers had been in the same location, without issue, for more than a decade before the change in law.
After a three-day trial over the course of several months in the District Court of Maryland, we did not prevail. At this time, we could give up and go home, or we could appeal the District Court’s ruling to the Circuit Court. We kept going.
In the Circuit Court, we prosecuted a de novo appeal. De Novo is Latin for “anew”, which means we had the opportunity to start from the beginning and try the case again before a new court as if the first trial never occurred.
This time around, the government attempted to dismiss the appeal outright before the appeal could be heard. After a hearing before the Court, the government’s Motion to Dismiss was denied. We were going to trial again.
The trial in the Circuit Court included cross-examination of the government’s expert witness (an experienced and knowledgeable Zoning Administrator with a decades-long career in the fields of planning and zoning), extensive legal argument, presentation of evidence, and strong testimony from our client's representative. The Circuit Court ultimately ruled in our favor and ordered that our client’s barriers are a non-conforming use.
Under Maryland Law, “[a] valid and lawful nonconforming use is established if a property owner can demonstrate that before, and at the time of, the adoption of a new zoning ordinance, the property was being used in a then-lawful manner for a use that, by later legislation, became non-permitted.” Trip Assocs., Inc. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 392 Md. 563, 573 (2006).
If the government has issued a violation notice for your property and you do not believe that your property is in violation of any law or ordinance, then JPB Law may be able to assist you.
Property ownership is a foundational tenet of our society. When the government changes the law and attempts to retroactively apply said change which adversely affects your property rights, call JPB Law for a lawyer that will have your back.