Yet another lawsuit has been filed in connection with the Town of Oxford’s 2012 sale of a Hawley Road property at the center of a tax dispute.
Background
Last year the town held a tax auction for 66 Hawley Road, a 12-acre property.
At the time the town said the owner of the property, a Greenwich-based company named JJT & M, Inc. (currently in bankruptcy), owed $480,000 in back taxes. Costs, fees and interest on that amount made the total the company owed to Oxford $1.2 million.
Two days before the auction, JJT & M sued the town, saying they had paid all their back taxes and had the canceled checks to prove it — but that the money was stolen by Karen Guillet, the disgraced former Oxford tax collector now serving a prison sentence for stealing more than $240,000 of taxpayer money.
JJT & M’s lawsuit against Oxford is still pending.
Let’s File Another
Last month, the company filed a new lawsuit against the town, claiming:
- “Slander of title,” because town officials recorded a new deed for the site in the name of the new owner in April, and
- Theft, based on the theory that the town is responsible for Guillet’s alleged theft of its payments.
The lawsuit seeks money damages and also to have a judge sort out the competing claims to the land.
The Valley Indy left a message seeking comment Friday (July 26) with Oxford First Selectman George Temple.
The lawsuit is below. Article continues after the document.
JJT & M claims in its lawsuit that the tax auction last year was fraudulent, echoing claims first raised by the would-be new owner of the property, Shelton resident Angelo Melisi, who sued the town in March saying town officials wouldn’t return his $100,000 deposit on the property after the auction.
The town responded to Melisi’s lawsuit by countersuing, saying he’s not owed $100,000 — rather, he owes the town $500,000, the remainder of the $600,000 price tag he agreed to at the tax auction.
Melisi’s lawyer has said his client would gladly wash his hands of the property if he got his $100,000 deposit back.
As of last month the town and Melisi were in talks to settle the matter.
The 12-acre property, bounded by Hawley Road and Willenbrock Road, is dotted with satellite dishes and sophisticated telecommunications equipment and was last appraised at a value of about $2.1 million, according to the property card for the site in the town’s geographic information system.
At one point the property was used for the Cold War-era Strategic Defense Initiative of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan — nicknamed “Star Wars” — before being converted to commercial use after the program was dissolved in the early 1990s.
In the new lawsuit filed last month, JJT & M said it has been denied licenses for “satellite telecommunication operations pursuant to the plaintiff’s business plan for the property” because of the ownership dispute.
The lawyer representing JJT & M, Hartford-based Thomas Willcutts, said Friday (July 26) that the company had disputed its tax bills well before Guillet was ever suspected of wrongdoing.
“When the news on her came out, that seemed to explain what all the problems were, and it was expected that the town would roll up their sleeves and acknowledge there’s a problem,” Willcutts said. “Instead they just forged ahead with the numbers she had been generating and pretended it never happened.”
He said he hopes to compel the town to explain its numbers through the discovery process in the case.
“There may be some tax owed on this property, they (JJT & M) just don’t know what it is,” Willcutts said. “They’re confident the numbers the town is using have no connection to reality.”
A hearing on the dispute has been scheduled for Aug. 5.
