7 Germantown Road, LLC v. Danbury

Citations

• 351 Conn. 169

Syllabus

The defendant town appealed to this court, upon certification by the Chief Justice pursuant to statute (§ 52-265a) that a matter of substantial public interest was involved, from certain decisions issued by the trial court in the course of adjudicating the plaintiff property owners' tax appeals. The trial court had initially granted the defendant's motions to dismiss five of the six underlying tax appeals for the plaintiffs' failure to timely file appraisals of their respective properties with the court, as required by the relevant statute ((Rev. to 2023) § 12-117a (a) (2)). The trial court subsequently granted motions to open the judgments of dismissal and for reargument, and it denied the defendant's corrected motion to dismiss the sixth tax appeal. On appeal from the trial court's decisions granting the motions to open and denying the corrected motion to dismiss, the defendant claimed that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiffs' tax appeals because the plaintiffs had failed to comply with the appraisal filing require- ment set forth in § 12-117a (a) (2). Held: The appeal was not rendered moot by the fact that the plaintiffs in the five dismissed appeals filed new tax appeals in the Superior Court pursuant to a recent amendment (P.A. 24-151, §114) to § 12-117a (a) (2) that allows certain taxpayers whose tax appeals were dismissed under certain circum- stances to commence a new appeal subject to certain conditions. The trial court did not lack subject matter jurisdiction over the underlying tax appeals due to the plaintiffs' failure to timely file their respective apprais- als with the court in accordance with § 12-117a (a) (2). The appraisal filing requirement did not implicate the plaintiffs' statutory standing to pursue their tax appeals, as the plaintiffs were the type of parties to which the statute was directed, and the plaintiffs' failure to timely file their appraisals by the statutory deadline did not otherwise divest the tr