Justice Gerard Loehr
Chestnut Ridge owned a large, vacant parcel near Steve's Property, a landscaping business. Chestnut unsuccessfully attempted to develop its parcel for 20 years. The village enacted Local Law 1 explicitly making landscaping a permitted use in a laboratory-office district, with an exception that appeared to apply only to Steve's. The Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) met secretly to discuss the merits of Chestnut's application for an interpretation of whether Steve's landscaping/storage at the property was a permitted use. In a resolution, the ZBA ruled that prior to the effective date of Local Law 1 Steve's use of the property for landscaping storage was a non-permitted use. Steve's sought to set aside the ZBA's resolution as arbitrary, noting it was not relying on an estoppel, as defendants contended, but that its storage was a permitted use under the zoning code under prior interpretations. Steve's argued the ZBA failed to adhere to prior precedent without distinguishing it. The court found the ZBA violated the Open Meeting Law, and displayed bad faith by deciding to put Steve's out of business at Chestnut's request. As such, it granted the petition to annul the resolution as issued without jurisdiction, and awarded costs and attorney fees based on the village's and ZBA's bad faith.
