Nutter v. Mayor of Baltimore

Prescott, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from a decree dismissing the plaintiffs’ bill of complaint, which prayed that the Mayor & C. C. of Baltimore and its Building Inspection Engineer be enjoined from granting a building permit to Non-Profit Housing Company (Non-Profit); that the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (the Board) be ordered to cancel a permit originally granted to Non-Profit on September 28, 1960, and the then current extension thereof; and that Non-Profit be restrained from seeking a building permit with the variances authorized by the Board’s resolution of September 28, 1960, and subsequent extensions. We decided the case earlier by a per curiam order; we now give the reasons for our decision. This is the second chapter wherein Mr. Nutter, et at., have shown their displeasure at the Board’s action in granting a variance which authorized a permit to Non-Profit for the construction of an apartment house.

The first chapter is found in Nutter v. City of Baltimore, 230 Md. 6 , 185 A. 2d 360 . The ²¹² facts up to the time of that appeal are fully set forth therein. We shall, therefore, outline them very briefly, and state what has transpired since. As indicated above, the Board granted a variance to NonProfit authorizing a permit to erect an apartment building.

Under the provisions of an ordinance, the grantee of such a privilege was required to exercise the rights conferred by it within six months of the final action validating said privilege. Due to certain matters beyond the control of Non-Profit, it was unable to take advantage of the privilege within six months. The board, therefore, granted it three extensions of six months each, the last one being in March of 1962. Within thirty days thereafter, the appellants, there and here, appealed to the Baltimore City Court “from the action of the Board * * * dated March 7, 1962, and the earlier orders of the said Board * * That court dismissed the appeals.

We held that the appeals which were not taken within thirty days of the orders appealed from were properly dismissed, but the appeal from the last order was timely and should not have been dismissed. We further held that although Judge Foster dismissed the appeal, he actually passed upon the propriety of the Board’s extension ■of March 6, 1962, and we affirmed his ruling thereon. In doing so, we pointed out that appellants, in their petition of appeal, alleged that the zoning change sign posted on the property gave