State Roads Commission v. O'Boyle

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The State Roads Commission asks us to construe the law and the Maryland rules to permit it to maintain a condemnation case filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County thirty-one days after the Commission filed its notice of dissatisfaction with the award of the Board of Property Review. 1 We agree with Judge Parker that the case must be dismissed as filed late. This Court, in State Roads Commission v. Orleans, 239 Md. 368, 372-73 , pointed out that: “Under Sec. 18 of Art. 89B [now Rule U 27], as originally enacted, either the Commission or the property owner could ‘appeal’ within thirty days to the Circuit Court from an award of the Board and, upon appeal, the case was to be heard and determined under the procedures of Articles 89B and 33A of the Code. If the property owner sought the appeal, he was to notify the Commission in writing and thereupon it became the duty of [lie Commission to file the condemnation suit in the proper court.

(It was held in Volz v. State Roads Commission, 221 Md. 209 , that the statute meant simply that either side may bring about the filing of a condemnation suit in the Circuit Court and have it heard as a new and independent action and that the ‘appeal’ was the condemnation case.) Sec. 18, as originally enacted, then used the words quoted above and here to be construed that, if title were not acquired within one year or a condemnation suit not filed, ‘as aforesaid,’ the valuation date was not to be the recordation date but the ‘time of acquisition.’ ” ⁵¹⁴ The holding in Orleans was that since the Commission had not acquired title within one year from the filing of the maps or plats and had neither filed suit within that time nor within thirty days of the filing of the owner’s notice of dissatisfaction, the date of trial rather than the date of the filing of the maps or plats was the date of valuation. We reiterated this holding in First National v. State Roads Commission, 247 Md. 709 , rejecting the Commission’s contention that it could extend the thirty-day period within which it must file the condemnation proceeding by filing its own notice of dissatisfaction after the owner had filed his and calculating the thirty days from the later filing, and emphasizing that once the owner filed a notice of dissatisfaction the Commission’s duty to condemn within thirty days thereof was mandatory and ineluctable. We said (p. 711 of 247 Md.): “Volz v. State Roads Commission, 221 Md. 209, 214-16 , and cases cited, and State Roads Comm. v. Orleans, 239 Md. 368, 375, strongly indicate, if they do not hold, that the ‘right of appeal’ given by § 18 of Art. 89B of the Code to a party dissatisfied with the award of a review board is the right of the owner to compel the filing of a condemnation case within thirty days of a demand therefor and the right of the condemnor to file a condemnation suit within thirty days of the review board’s award.” In the case before us the Commission argues that the only penalty it incurs by filing the condemnation suit more than thirty days after it filed its notice of dissatisfaction is that it must use the time of trial as the valuation date. Judge Parker disposed of this contention, correctly we