Stratford v. 500 North Avenue, LLC

Citations

• 210 Conn. App. 718

Syllabus

The plaintiff town sought to foreclose municipal tax liens assessed against certain real property that had been owned by the defendant N Co. until shortly before this action was commenced. The parties agreed that title to the property vested in another company prior to the commencement of the action. The trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment as to liability, and thereafter rendered a judgment of foreclo- sure by sale, from which N Co. appealed to this court. The plaintiff moved to dismiss the appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the ground that N Co. lacked standing to maintain the appeal because it no longer owned the property and, therefore, was not aggrieved by the judgment. Held that the plaintiff's motion to dismiss was granted and the appeal was dismissed because N Co. lacked standing to challenge the foreclosure judgment on appeal: because N Co. was divested of its ownership interest in the property by the time the judgment of foreclo- sure by sale was rendered, it did not have a specific personal and legal interest in the transfer of title to the property through the foreclosure sale, and, even if the foreclosure sale proceeds were insufficient to satisfy N Co.'s alleged tax obligations, the plaintiff could not pursue a deficiency judgment against N Co.; moreover, because N Co. lacked standing, it would not suffer any collateral consequences from the fore- closure judgment, and, therefore, was not aggrieved by the judgment because the plaintiff could not use the judgment as a basis for invoking the doctrine of collateral estoppel to preclude N Co. from relitigating any issues resolved by the judgment, including its alleged tax liabilities. Considered October 6, 2021—officially released February 22, 2022