OK Appeals Courtroom Focuses on Distinction Between Business and Leisure Autos and an RV Labeled as Each Following Variance Denial

This put up was authored by Sebastian Perez of Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Legislation Middle

When the proprietor of a pictures enterprise requested a variance to retailer her RV in her driveway, town board’s denial changed into a query for the Courtroom of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma. The Board’s denial was introduced earlier than the District Courtroom on enchantment the place it was decided the RV was not topic to the restrictions of the native ordinance and granted the variance. This enchantment follows.

Plaintiff filed a variance requesting that the RV she used for her pictures enterprise be exempt from Damaged Arrow Zoning Code Part 5.4(Ok)(4), which prohibit leisure automobiles from parking or being saved on the premises for greater than 24 hours, to park in entrance of the constructing. The Board denied the request after a listening to and claimed it was as a result of a number of software necessities weren’t met. Plaintiff appealed the Board’s determination to the District Courtroom of Tulsa County and a trial de novo was held. The trial court docket held Plaintiff’s RV was a industrial automobile and exempt from town’s ordinance and granted the variance permitting the RV to park on entrance of the property. The Board appealed the district court docket’s order.

The Courtroom of Appeals of Oklahoma reviewed the decrease court docket’s order to find out whether or not it was towards the clear weight of the proof or Opposite to legislation and reviewed questions of legislation de novo. The Board argued that the trial court docket erroneously utilized the definition which seemed to use of the automobile as a substitute of its design and created a loophole the place RV house owners might retailer their automobiles of their driveways by licensing them as a industrial automobile and utilizing them for enterprise functions. The Courtroom first held that the automobile’s classification as a industrial automobile didn’t exempt it from additional necessities as a leisure automobile underneath the ordinance. Based mostly on the plain that means of the definition for a leisure automobile throughout the native zoning code, it was clear the RV fell inside that class. Additionally related, nothing within the code exempted an RV from the restriction of parking in entrance of the constructing when categorised as a industrial requirement. The Courtroom then held the trial court docket erred in figuring out the Plaintiff’s RV was not topic to the parking restriction of the statute. The Courtroom additional concluded that the trial court docket erred in granting the Plaintiff a variance as a result of she failed to satisfy her burden of proving every standards needed to acquire a variance. The Courtroom agreed with the Board failed to satisfy the requirement of a variance the place the trial court docket didn’t discover a situation or peculiar circumstances or distinctive to the Plaintiff’s property; the applying of the ordinance to the Plainiff’s property didn’t create n pointless hardship; and the variance granted was not the minimal essential to alleviate the alleged pointless hardship.

McCleary v Metropolis of Damaged Arrow Board of Adjustment, 2021 WL 6881259 (OK App. 2/9/2022)