Bolduc v. Pinkham

The plaintiff in this Bill in Equity, according to factual allegations carried in his amended process, admitted to be true by defendants' demurrer, Brown v. Guy Gannett Publishing Co., 147 Me. 3, 82 A.2d 797; Lea v. Robeson, 12 Gray, 280; Whitehouse Equity Practice, Sec. 213 (Vol. I, Page 393), is, and has been for a long time, engaged in the bakery business in the City of Waterville, and is the owner of a tract of land therein, having a frontage on Grove Street, which he purchased in 1945 for the express purpose of building a bakery thereon. Additional factual allegations, so admitted, are that the erection of a building on said land in the time intervening between his acquisition of it and the enactment of a Zoning Ordinance by said City, the pertinent provisions of which will be noted hereafter, was impossible because of post-war shortages and economic conditions entirely beyond his control, and that enforcement of the ordinance, without recognition that the plaintiff is entitled to an exception or variance from its regulations, will reduce the market value of said land and destroy its marketability. The defendants are Linwood J. Pinkham, the Building Inspector of the City of Waterville, and said City. The prayers of plaintiff's process are that the defendants, their agents, employees and attorneys, be restrained from enforcing said Zoning Ordinance against the plaintiff and his property aforesaid. The case is brought forward for review on plaintiff's exceptions to a ruling sustaining the defendants' demurrer and dismissing the process.