## Facts

- Summit’s planning board adopted a comprehensive master plan proposing that a 63.5-acre tract owned by Ciba Corporation, then zoned for single-family residences (A-15), should eventually be rezoned to permit parking and research/office uses.
- The tract was bordered on three sides by single-family residences and was subject to deed restrictions limiting it to single-family residential use until 1975.
- The master plan contemplated a 125-foot buffer zone with landscaping/screening between nearby residential properties (including plaintiffs’ property) and the proposed Ciba development.
- Adjacent landowners sued the planning board and the city to invalidate the master plan as to the Ciba tract and to enjoin any implementation.
- Plaintiffs alleged the plan was arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory, unlawful spot zoning, contrary to the Municipal Planning Act, and procedurally defective (including alleged inadequate notice and conflicts of interest).
- No rezoning ordinance had been enacted by the municipal governing body; the only action challenged was adoption of the master plan.

## Issues

1. Whether a planning board’s adoption of a master plan proposing future rezoning creates a ripe, justiciable controversy for adjacent landowners when no implementing zoning ordinance has been enacted.
2. Whether asserted substantive objections (including alleged spot zoning and statutory violations) to the plan are reviewable in court before legislative implementation.
3. Whether alleged procedural defects in adopting the plan (including notice and conflicts) invalidate the plan where it has not been implemented and has no present effect on zoning or property rights.

## Decision

- The court dismissed the complaint and entered judgment for defendants.
- The court held the action was premature because the master plan, standing alone, had no binding legal effect on zoning classifications or plaintiffs’ property rights.
- The court declined to reach the merits of plaintiffs’ substantive zoning attacks because there was no enacted rezoning ordinance to review.
- The court treated asserted harms (including decreased property values and taking-type claims) as speculative at this stage because any change depended on future legislative action.

## Legal Principles

- A municipal master plan is an advisory declaration of planning policy and intention; it does not, by itself, rezone property or impose binding legal consequences.
- Judicial review generally requires a present, concrete injury; challenges to proposed future land-use changes are not ripe when implementation depends on later legislative action.
- Substantive claims such as spot zoning or statutory noncompliance are typically reviewable upon enactment of an implementing zoning ordinance, not upon adoption of a nonbinding plan.
- Alleged procedural irregularities in adopting a nonbinding plan do not create a justiciable controversy absent present legal effect on property rights.

## Conclusion

Because the city had not enacted any ordinance implementing the master plan’s proposed rezoning of the Ciba tract, the court found no present legal change or cognizable injury and dismissed the landowners’ challenge as premature.


Cochran v. Plan. Bd. of City of Summit, 87 N.J. Super. 526, 210 A.2d 99 (Law Div. 1965)