Ah Min Holding, LLC v. Hartford

Citations

• 217 Conn. App. 574

Syllabus

The plaintiff landlord sought to recover damages from the defendant city for the defendant's alleged breach of a tax abatement agreement in regard to certain residential properties the plaintiff owned in Hartford. The agreement provided that the plaintiff agreed to maintain and rent a specified number of dwelling units at the properties for low and moderate income persons or families in order to receive a certain tax abatement. In response to complaints about a variety of deteriorating and hazardous living conditions at the properties, the defendant's hous- ing code inspector, K, conducted several inspections of the dwelling units and discovered numerous housing code violations. K gave the plaintiff notice of the violations and specified a date by which the plaintiff needed to correct them. A few months later, K conducted additional inspections, revealing nearly identical violations as those found pre- viously. K again sent violation notices to the plaintiff, specifying when the violations had to be corrected. Following the second round of inspec- tions, the defendant's tax abatement committee held a meeting, at which it unanimously voted to terminate the agreement. In accordance with the agreement, the committee issued a termination letter to the plaintiff, stating that, if the alleged code violations were not cured within ninety days, the agreement would be terminated. The defendant took the posi- tion that after the ninety day period passed without correction of the code violations, the agreement automatically terminated. Several months later, the plaintiff sold the properties, and, as part of the closing, was required to pay the defendant a certain amount of real property taxes. If the agreement had not been terminated, the plaintiff would have had to pay abated taxes in a lesser amount. The plaintiff thereafter sought to collect the amount of the property taxes it claimed to have overpaid due to the allegedly improper termination of the agreement. Following a t