Hanlon v. Town of Sheffield

The plaintiff John R. Hanlon, Jr., appeals from summary judgment entered in favor of the defendants, ruling that the town of Sheffield (town) was authorized to regulate the plaintiff’s use of his property as a private noncommercial aircraft landing area notwithstanding the regulatory authority of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation aeronautics division (division). 2 In reversing the judgment, we acknowledge that the motion judge was confronted, as are we, with statutory language in G. L. c. 90, § 39B, that undermines the evident purpose of the statute, and we note that this is an…