Perkins v. Madison County Livestock & Fair Ass'n

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding “use of the fairgrounds that is claimed to constitute a nuisance did not begin until after the plaintiffs were already on their properties,” so “plaintiffs have priority of location”
• noting that under Iowa law “[a] non-conforming use is one ‘that existed and was lawful when the [zoning] restriction became effective and which has continued to exist since that time.’ ”
• examining whether plaintiffs acquired their property before defendant began using fairgrounds for races, not whether plaintiffs owned their property before defendant established fairgrounds
• stating a nonconforming use is one lawfully in existence when a zoning restriction became effective and has been permitted to continue to exist
• “To ascertain legislative intent, [the court] look[s] to what the legislature said. [The court does] not speculate as to the probable legislative intent apart from the words used in the statute.”
• “We examine each plaintiff’s claim independently of the other plaintiffs’ claims so that a plaintiff’s claim will succeed or fail on the basis of that plaintiff’s particular circumstances.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).