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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to motions for rehearing under Rule 22 as well as formal revision before publication in the New Hampshire Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter, Supreme Court of New Hampshire, One Charles Doe Drive, Concord, New Hampshire 03301, of any editorial errors in order that corrections may be made before the opinion goes to press. Errors may be reported by E-mail at the following address: reporter@courts.state.nh.us. Opinions are available on the Internet by 9:00 a.m. on the morning of their release. The direct address of the court's home page is: http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme. THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE ___________________________ Hillsborough-southern judicial district No. 2006-829 74 COX STREET, LLC & a. v. CITY OF NASHUA & a. Argued: June 7, 2007 Opinion Issued: September 21, 2007 Prunier & Prolman, P.A., of Nashua (Andrew A. Prolman on the brief and orally), for the petitioners. Office of Corporation Counsel, of Nashua (David R. Connell on the brief and orally), for respondent City of Nashua. BRODERICK, C.J. The petitioners, 74 Cox Street, LLC and Andrea Harding, appeal an order of the Superior Court (Groff, J.) dismissing their petition for a writ of certiorari which challenged a decision of the Nashua Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) to reconsider its denial of a request for a rehearing filed by the intervenors, Peter L. and Amy J. Bedard. We affirm. The facts of this case are not in dispute. In September 2005, the ZBA granted the petitioners' application for two variances. The intervenors filed a timely request for rehearing, to which the petitioners objected. At a ZBA meeting on December 6, a motion to grant rehearing received no second and, consequently, the ZBA denied the intervenors' request.

On December 13, the intervenors wrote to the ZBA, contending that various documents they had submitted in support of their request for rehearing had not been transmitted to the board and asking the board to reconsider its denial of their request for rehearing. At its December 13 meeting, the ZBA granted the request to reconsider its earlier denial, and tabled the matter until its scheduled January 10, 2006 meeting. The question of whether or not to grant the renewed request for rehearing was added to the agenda for the January meeting, which was published on December 29. On the day of the January 10 meeting, the petitioners objected, by letter, to the ZBA's December 13 decision to reconsider its December 6 denial of rehearing. At the January meeting, the ZBA voted to grant the renewed request for rehearing, explaining that it had "information that was not presented or available at the time of the original hearing." Before the ZBA could conduct a rehearing, the petitioners filed the present action in the superior court. While it was styled as an appeal from the ZBA's decision to reconsider its denial of the intervenors' request for rehearing, under RSA 677:4 (Supp. 2006), the trial court treated the filing as a petition for a writ of certiorari, reasoning that RSA 677:4 grants no right of appeal from a ZBA's decision to grant a request for rehearing. After establishing the proper standard of review, the trial court ruled that the ZBA had the inherent authority to revisit a denial of a request for rehearing during the thirty-day statutory appeal period. As a consequence, the trial court dismissed the petition. This appeal followed. We begin by noting that while the respondent urged the trial court to treat the petitioners' filing as a certiorari petition rather than an appeal, it is not at all clear that certiorari review was legally available to the petitioners under the circumstances of this case. Ordinarily, certiorari will not be granted where an adequate remedy is available on appeal. Petition of Turgeon, 140 N.H. 52, 53 (1995). Here, if the rehearing had proceeded without the petitioners' filing in the superior court, they may still have obtained their variances, making the questions raised here moot. And if the variances were ultimately denied, then the petitioners could have litigated the issues they raise here in an appeal from a ZBA decision denying the variances. Thus, had we been asked to do so, we may well have affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the certiorari petition on grounds that the petitioners were not entitled to certiorari review in the first instance. However, as it was the respondent who advocated certiorari review, we will assume without deciding that certiorari review was available to the petitioners, and, like the trial court, we will proceed to the merits of the case. Certiorari is an extraordinary remedy that is not granted as a matter of right, but rather at the discretion of the court. Petition of State of N.H. (State v.

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San Giovanni), 154 N.H. 671, 674 (2007). The writ is granted only when it is needed to serve the substantial ends of justice. Petition of Evans, 154 N.H. 142, 145 (2006), cert. denied, 127 S. Ct. 1888 (2007). Review on certiorari is limited to whether the agency acted illegally with respect to jurisdiction, authority or observance of the law, whereby it arrived at a conclusion which could not legally or reasonably be made, or unsustainably exercised its discretion or acted arbitrarily, unreasonably or capriciously. Id. We, in turn, will uphold the trial court's decision on a certiorari petition unless it is not supported by the evidence or is erroneous as a matter of law. Heron Cove Assoc. v. DVMD Holdings, 146 N.H. 211, 213 (2001). The petitioners list five separate issues in their notice of appeal and their brief, but the brief itself advances two arguments: (1) that a New Hampshire ZBA has no inherent authority to act outside the statutory framework of RSA chapter 677 and reconsider a denial of a request for rehearing, either upon its own motion or at the request of an aggrieved party; and (2) allowing a ZBA the inherent authority to reconsider its own decisions violates the due process rights of parties such as the petitioners in this case. We disagree. The principal question in this appeal

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