313 Mass. 553 | Mass. | 1943
The bill prays for an injunction restraining the defendant from carrying on the business of cutting and sawing or removing standing timber on the defendant’s premises known as “Westbrook Farm” in Pittsfield in alleged violation of the city’s zoning ordinance, which inr eludes Westbrook Farm in a “Residence ‘A’” district, and which provides that in such district “no building or structure shall be erected which is intended or designed to be used, in whole or in part, for any industrial, manufacturing, trade or commercial purpose . . .,” with exceptions not material to the grounds on which this decision rests.
The trial judge also made these general findings: The work of cutting and sawing being done by the defendant is not in any sense a noxious business and does not consti
Whether the impact of a zoning ordinance upon the particular use which a landowner desires to make of his land is a reasonable and permissible interference with his rights as owner in the exercise of the police power for the public benefit or is an arbitrary, unreasonable, and oppressive, and therefore forbidden, deprivation of private property without compensation often depends upon the peculiar circumstances of the particular instance. Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. 272 U. S. 365, 387, 395. It may be said that in such cases law and fact march together. The correct decision is to be found in the answer to the question whether the particular interference that causes injury to the individual can reasonably be thought to have some tendency to advance the interests of the public, either in the direct consequences, or indirectly by upholding the integrity of a system that as a whole may reasonably be thought to promote the interests of the public. Lexington v. Govenar, 295 Mass. 31, 36. Wilbur v. Newton, 302 Mass. 38, 39, 41. And of course all presumptions are to be indulged in favor of the validity of the ordinance in its application to all instances falling within its terms.
In the present instance, on the facts found, the application of the ordinance to stop the defendant’s activities would permanently deprive the defendant, and therefore the community, of a valuable and otherwise wasting asset without accomplishing in the slightest degree, directly or indirectly, any of the purposes for which zoning is author
The plaintiff’s bill of exceptions raises no question not
The final decree did not deal with a counterclaim wherein the defendant asks an injunction against the plaintiff. Such relief is no doubt unnecessary. We think that the decree should be modified by dismissing the counterclaim without prejudice. As so modified the decree is affirmed with costs to the defendant. The exceptions are overruled.
Ordered accordingly.