The Connecticut Appeals Court’s opinion in Stones Trail, LLC v. Town of Weston, No. AC 38078 (July 18, 2017), does not offer a lot in terms of substance — it holds that a property owner’s regulatory takings claim based on the Town’s approval of what the owner thought was a subdivision was not ripe because the owner had not actually filed a subdivision request — but the facts are interesting nonetheless:
The plaintiff had purchased the property with the purpose of dividing it into six buildable lots. Before the closing of the purchase, the plaintiff submitted three maps of the property to the town. The town’s attorney determined that the property depicted on one of the maps was not a subdivision, and that map was stamped accordingly and filed in the town land records. Thereafter, the other two maps, which altered the lot lines of the property to depict six potentially developable lots, were stamped with the identical language and filed in the land records. The plaintiff completed the purchase of the property, in reliance on the review of the lots by town officials and the stamped notation. The plaintiff did not seek or obtain approval from the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission for the subdivision of the lots, believing that such approval was not necessary because the town’s prior procedure had been to place the same stamped language on maps when it was determined that subdivision approval was not needed. Thereafter, the plaintiff was informed by several town officials that it had to seek subdivision approval from the commission prior to subdividing the properties. The town’s attorneys rejected the plaintiff’s requests to reconsider that determination and urged the plaintiff to apply to the commission for subdivision approval. The town’s zoning enforcement officer also denied the plaintiff’s request for a certificate of zoning compliance, which was upheld by the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals. Prior to trial, the town filed four motions to dismiss the plaintiff’s action on the ground that its claims were not ripe and that the court therefore lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Those motions were denied. The jury returned a verdict in the plaintiff’s favor on its constitutional claims, after which the trial court, sua sponte, set aside the verdict and dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
We’re not sure where we are on this one. On one hand, finding a case not ripe and dismissing for lack of jurisdiction after the court’s rejection of the argument on four previous occasions over nine years of litigation, and allowing this case to go to trial, seems unfair, wasteful, and to cut in favor of the owner. Those stamped maps which showed the property as subdivided sure seem like the kind of things a buyer should be able to rely on. But, on the other hand, it does appear (at least in the court’s retelling of the story, which may be slanted), that the owner did plow forward even though the Town and its officials were telling the owner that it really didn’t have subdivided property.
But we also know what courts do when they feel that a citizen has the government painted into a corner by the law: they find a way to unpaint the corner. We don’t know who is right, but we do know what we would have counseled a client if she found herself in this situation.
Stones Trail, LLC v. Town of Weston, No. AC 38078 (Conn. App. July 18, 2017)