Link to Mo. Sup. Ct. Opinion
The Supreme Court of Missouri examined whether municipalities may bring declaratory judgment actions to solve boundary disputes with other municipalities. Individuals are prohibited from bringing such actions, but it was not clear if the prohibition extended to municipalities and other public corporations. The court said that the public policy reasoning behind prohibiting individuals from bringing such actions does not apply to municipalities. Therefore, the Supreme Court of Missouri allowed Lake St. Louis to bring a declaratory judgment action against O’Fallon to determine the boundary between the two cities.
I. Facts and Holding
On March 26, 2009, Lake St. Louis, a municipality in St. Charles County, filed a petition for declaratory judgment against O’Fallon, another municipality in St. Charles County.[2] Lake St. Louis alleged that it annexed property in 1982 which expanded its northern boundary to Interstate 70.[3] According to the petition, O’Fallon disputed the northern boundary and “subsequently annexed property, issued permits, and t[ook] other actions within the boundary of Lake Saint Louis . . . .”[4] The petition claimed that Lake St. Louis had “a legally protectable interest in enforcing its ordinances, collecting and administering taxes, and protecting” its rights in the disputed area.[5] Lake St. Louis asked the trial court to enter judgment declaring that the city’s northern boundary was the land it annexed in 1982 and that O’Fallon did not legally annex that property.[6]
O’Fallon filed a motion to dismiss in April 2009, alleging that Lake St. Louis could not “bring a declaratory judgment action to determine its boundaries” because the only mechanism for determining whether the annexation was proper was to have a quo warranto action filed by the attorney general or prosecuting attorney of St. Charles County.[7] Alternatively, O’Fallon claimed that the statute of limitations for a declaratory judgment action had expired.[8] The trial court granted the motion to dismiss, but it did not specify the ground upon which it ruled.[9]
Lake St. Louis appealed the dismissal, arguing that a municipality may bring a declaratory judgment action to determine its boundaries instead of relying solely on the attorney general’s or prosecuting attorney’s discretion as to whether to bring a quo warranto action on behalf of the municipality.[10] O’Fallon argued that Lake St. Louis’s goal was to oust O’Fallon from the land and the exclusive remedy for such an action is to file a writ of quo warranto.[11] According to Rule 98.02, only the attorney general or a prosecuting attorney can bring an action in quo warranto.[12] As a result, O’Fallon argued that Lake St. Louis did not have authority to obtain the relief it was requesting.[13]
Lake St. Louis argued that the Supreme Court of Missouri has never held that the reasoning underlying Rule 98.02 applies when the dispute is between two municipalities and concerns land boundaries.[14] According to Lake St. Louis, the attorney general or prosecuting attorney has discretion to bring a suit, but “[t]he governmental entity, . . . as the party directly affected, should have the right instead to bring a declaratory judgment action in its own name to vindicate its directly affected interest in the office or territory.”[15] O’Fallon urged the court to hold “that the prohibition on declaratory judgment actions by individuals also applies” to municipalities.[16]
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that the dismissal of Lake St. Louis’s petition was unwarranted.[17] Therefore, the judgment of the trial court was reversed.[18]
II. Legal Background
A. Motion to Dismiss
According to Nazeri v. Missouri Valley College, “a motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action is solely a test of the adequacy of the plaintiff’s petition.”[19] A court reviews the petition and determines whether the allegations are sufficient to establish a cause of action.[20] The court must take as true plaintiff’s averments and liberally grant all reasonable inferences to plaintiff.[21]
A motion to dismiss is reviewed de novo by an appellate court.[22] An appellate court will only consider the grounds raised in a motion to dismiss when the trial court’s dismissal of a petition is under review.[23] In this case, the Supreme Court of Missouri did not reach the merits of Lake St. Louis’s boundary claims because they were not one of the grounds required in a motion to dismiss.[24] As a result, the court only considered whether the grounds raised in the motion to dismiss actually supported dismissal.[25]
B. Proceedings in Quo Warranto
“To bring an action in quo warranto the ‘attorney general, prosecuting attorney, or circuit attorney may file an information ex officio, by virtue of the power of his [or her] office without leave of court when such an action would serve the public interest.’”[26] The attorney general or a prosecutor may bring a quo warranto action directly or “at the relation” of an interested person.[27]
Individuals, who are prohibited from bringing a quo warranto action, sometimes attempt to bring suit for an injunction or declaratory judgment seeking the same relief in order to sidestep the prohibition.[28] In Spiking School District No. 71, DeKalb County. v. Purported “Enlarged School District R-II, DeKalb County., Mo.,” residents of a school district filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that a new school district was invalidly formed and, therefore, the previous school districts still existed.[29] The court approved the dismissal of the petition and stated that “‘a declaratory judgment action is not available to the individual plaintiffs who are residents, patrons and taxpayers of the reorganized district’”[30] because individuals necessarily “‘are only indirectly affected by whether a public or municipal corporation has a de jure existence.’”[31]
According to the court, public policy does not permit suits by individuals because stability and certainty are important in this area of law and there could be serious consequences if individuals, who have no real interest in the matter, could call into question the existence of a municipality.[32]
In 1967, the Supreme Court of Missouri reaffirmed the rule that an individual cannot bring a declaratory judgment action in order to challenge the validity of a school district boundary.[33] However, the court recognized that the holding was not dispositive of whether the district could bring such a suit itself.[34] In Walker Reorganized School District R-4 v. Flint, the court held that the public policy reasons for prohibiting individuals from bringing such suits do not apply to suits brought by public school districts.[35] The school districts were permitted to bring a declaratory judgment action because their interests were directly affected by the boundary dispute.[36]
According to the Supreme Court of Missouri, a directly affected municipality might be left without a remedy if the law forced it to depend solely on the discretion of the attorney general or county prosecutor.[37] This rule avoids multiplicity of suits and spurious claims in the context of individual litigants, but such reasoning is not applicable to municipalities because they have “a direct and vital interest in determining [their] own boundaries.”[38] Therefore, while a quo warranto action brought by the attorney general or prosecuting attorney is proper when determining a boundary dispute, a declaratory judgment action brought directly by the municipality itself is also proper.[39]
C. Statute of Limitations
O’Fallon’s “motion to dismiss . . . also raised statute of limitations and laches defenses.”[40] Since the trial court did not state the reasons for dismissal, the Supreme Court of Missouri could not determine the grounds on which the dismissal was based.[41] The court found that “[a]llegations based on the statute of limitations or laches are in the nature of affirmative defenses and, as such, usually are raised in the answer.”[42] In this case, O’Fallon filed a motion to dismiss instead of an answer.[43] Therefore, the court could “look only to the petition to determine whether dismissal was proper based on laches or the statute of limitations.”[44] On its face, the petition did not show that the action was barred by the statute of limitations or laches.[45] Therefore, dismissal on those grounds would have been in error.[46]
III. Comment
In Lake Saint Louis, the importance of public policy cannot be understated. Public policy prohibits individuals from filing suit in declaratory judgment actions to determine the boundaries of municipalities and other public corporations.[47] The Supreme Court of Missouri based most of its analysis on the inapplicability of the aforementioned policy justification to suits filed by the municipalities themselves.[48] Individuals are not allowed to file quo warranto actions, so it makes sense that they should not be allowed to file declaratory judgment actions to accomplish the same purpose.[49] Lastly, the court made it clear that municipalities and other public corporations are the interested parties who are directly affected by these disputes.[50] However, the discretion afforded to the attorney general and prosecuting attorneys to file quo warranto actions has the potential to deprive municipalities of the enforcement of their rights. Lake Saint Louis insures that municipalities and other public corporations have recourse to protect their physical boundaries.
- Drew Weber
[1] 324 S.W.3d 756 (Mo. 2010) (en banc).
[2] Id. at 758.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id. at 758-59.
[6] Id. at 759.
[7] Id. at 758-59. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, a writ of quo warranto is “[a] common-law writ used to inquire into the authority by which a public office is held or a franchise is claimed” or “[a]n action by which the state seeks to revoke a corporation’s charter.”
[8] Id. at 759.
[9] Id.
[10] Id. at 758.
[11] Id. at 759.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id. at 761.
[15] Id.
[16] Id. at 762.
[17] Id. at 764.
[18] Id.
[19] Nazeri v. Mo. Valley Coll., 860 S.W.2d 303, 306 (Mo. 1993) (en banc).
[20] Id.
[21] Lake St. Louis, 324 S.W.3d. at 759.
[22] Lynch v. Lynch, 260 S.W.3d 834, 836 (Mo. 2008) (en banc).
[23] Brennan By and Through Brennan v. Curators of the Univ. of Mo., 942 S.W.2d 432, 434 (Mo. App. 1997).
[24] Lake St. Louis, 324 S.W.3d. at 759.
[25] Id.
[26] State ex inf. Graham v. Hurley, 540 S.W.2d 20, 22 (Mo. 1976) (en banc).
[27] Lake St. Louis, 324 S.W.3d. at 760.
[28] Id.
[29] Id. (citing Spiking School District No. 71, DeKalb County v. Purported “Enlarged School District R-II, DeKalb County., MO.,” 245 S.W.2d 13 (Mo. 1952) (en banc).
[30] Id. (quoting Spiking School District, 245 S.W.2d at 21).
[31] Id. (quoting Spiking School District, 245 S.W.2d at 21).
[32] Lake St. Louis, 324 S.W.3d at 760.
[33] Id.
[34] Id.
[35] Id. at 762 (citing Walker Reorganized School District R-4 v. Flint et. Al., 303 S.W.2d 200, 205-06 (Mo. App. 1957)).
[36] Id.
[37] Id. at 763.
[38] Id.
[39] Id.
[40] Id.
[41] Id.
[42] Id. at 764 (citing Lynch v. Lynch, 260 S.W.3d 834, 837 (Mo. 2008) (en banc)).
[43] Id.
[44] Id.
[45] Id.
[46] Id.
[47] Spiking School District No. 71, DeKalb County v. Purported “Enlarged School District R-II, DeKalb County., Mo.,” 245 S.W.2d 13, 21 (Mo. 1952) (en banc).
[48] See Lake St. Louis, 324 S.W.3d at 759-63.
[49] See Id. at 760.
[50] Id. at 761.
