TLOA of CT, LLC v. Taipe

Citations

• 220 Conn. App. 667

Syllabus

The plaintiff assignee of a municipal tax lien on certain real property in the city of Bridgeport owned by the defendant sought to foreclose the lien. At the time the defendant purchased the property in January, 2016, there were unpaid taxes assessed on the property from 2015. In April, 2017, the city filed the certificate of lien on the land records for the 2015 taxes owed on the property and subsequently assigned the tax lien to the plaintiff's predecessor in interest, which assigned the lien to the plaintiff. The defendant paid his property taxes as he received bills from the city. The first property tax bill he received was sent by the city to the defendant in July, 2017, at which time the city had already recorded and assigned to the plaintiff's predecessor in interest the tax lien, which remained due and owing on the property. The defendant never made any payments to the plaintiff in connection with the assigned lien. In May, 2020, the plaintiff commenced this action seeking to foreclose on the tax lien. In his answer, the defendant asserted that, under the applica- ble statute (§ 12-144b), the city was required to apply the amounts that he had paid from 2017 to 2020 first to the oldest outstanding taxes owed on the property, which he claimed were the taxes owed on the 2015 tax lien, by transferring those amounts to the plaintiff before applying any such amounts to the taxes that were due and owing to the city. The parties each filed a motion for summary judgment. The trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment as to liability only and denied the defendant's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the plaintiff had established its prima facie case for foreclosure of a tax lien and that the defendant's asserted special defense of setoff was not viable. On the defendant's appeal to this court from the trial court's judgment of foreclosure by sale, held that the trial court properly granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and