Western landowners' zoning cases go to trial on one count
By Shannon Sollinger
Five landowners who challenged the county's 2006 rezoning of the western part of the county will get their day in court, but only on the charge that the county's action was "arbitrary and capricious."
The 2006 rezoning put new limits on subdividing lots, and the landowners argue that it violated their rights.
Attorneys involved said it will be months, at best, before the cases get on the court's docket for trial.
Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne, in a June 26 opinion letter, agreed with the county's lawyers' argument that the other two charges – that the down-zoning was piecemeal and that the landowners have a vested right to subdivide – lack legal merit to go to trial.
One of the five plaintiffs, Mary Ball Sauer, will be allowed to continue with her claim of a vested right, Horne ruled. That case will eventually go to trial on both the vested-rights charge and the arbitrary-and-capricious count.
In allowing the five to go forward with the claim that the down-zoning was "arbitrary and capricious," Horne wrote, "The Court is of the opinion that the pleadings support a claim of arbitrary, unreasonable and capricious zoning that has, among other things, resulted in a dearth of uniformity in treatment of landowners within the district."
Before December 2006, most land in the western two-thirds of the county's 330,000 acres could be subdivided into 3-acre lots. On Dec. 5, 2006, the Board of Supervisors adopted the new zoning, which limits subdivision to 20- or 50-acre lots, with more density possible under certain clustering and open-space requirements.
Mary Ball Sauer had proposed a family subdivision of her 9 acres on Gleedsville Road in 2002, before an earlier Board of Supervisors, in 2003, down-zoned the west. She joined 200-some other landowners in a legal challenge to that down-zoning, and was one of 20 who reached a vested-rights agreement with the county.
The other four landowners involved in the June 26 ruling from Horne do not have a signed vested-rights agreement. Horne dismissed their claims on that count.
The Virginia Supreme Court found technical flaws in the advertising of the 2003 down-zoning and threw it out. A new Board of Supervisors could have re-advertised the zoning changes to correct the problem but declined to do that. It finally adopted a less stringent version of the down-zoning in 2006.
The five plaintiffs, who are represented by Mari Hommel of Reed Smith, are Purcellville West LLC, FBJ Real Estate LLC, the Light Tract (trading as Old Wheatland Partners LLC), Aberdeen LLC and Mary Ball Sauer.
Horne had earlier dismissed other complaints, including the charge that the advertising of the 2006 down-zoning in the Loudoun Times-Mirror did not meet legal requirements. A sixth landowner, Little Piney Run Estates LLC, has appealed Horne's decision on the advertising to the Virginia Supreme Court. A seventh plaintiff, John Roy and Sally Mann, had been represented by Reed Smith, but asked to be dropped from Reed Smith representation before the cases were heard June 12.