Town of Stratford v. Ewdokia Sokol (2013)

THE COURT:  Good afternoon, everyone.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Good afternoon, Your Honor.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Good afternoon, Your Honor.   For the record, Your Honor, Thomas Thornberry for the Sokols.

THE COURT:  Okay.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Christopher Ciancanelli for the plaintiff, Town of Stratford.

THE COURT:  Okay. Who wishes to be heard?

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Your Honor, I'm thinking back—this was my motion that was filed some time ago.

THE COURT:  March of 2012.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  And what I'd like to do is get this resolved.   There are multiple pieces of real estate, and as you remember and there was allegations of blight which have been cleaned up, and there were also allegations that stuff was moved from one, you know, to another piece of property that may or may not have been covered by this lawsuit or another one.   But another action was brought under zoning which we resolved, I think, two weeks ago.   We stipulated to a judgment in that, and everything has been resolved across the board with all properties owned by either Andrew or his mother.   And there are some ongoing things, for example, he's painting one of—he's reroofing one of the houses.   So there's some items there for that and we discussed that with the judge that day and one of the houses is being painted.   But other than that, everything has been resolved.

So what I'd like to do, what I really want to do is try to get rid of these fines, these onerous fines that have been held over his head and Mrs. Sokol's head.

THE COURT:  Counsel?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Basically, this has been my position from the start on this motion to open.   Again, everything that we hear from Attorney Thornberry does not point to any sort of satisfaction of the two-pronged test to open a judgment.   There has to be a good defense that existed at the time of the judgment and that there had to be a reasonable cause for not being able to make that defense.   But even before we get to that, I really want to stress that there are—that the judgment entered here, which was really a notice of assessment that was set forth by the municipal agency through the Town of Stratford on citation for blight existing on properties.

The Practice Book Section 23–51 which states—was titled a Petition to Open Parking for Citation Assessments, states any aggrieved person who wishes to appeal a parking or citation assessment issued by a town, city, borough or other municipality shall file with the clerk of the court within the time limited by the statute a petition to open assessment with a copy of the notice of assessment and annexed thereto.   The applicable statute is General Statute 7–152c which is the Citation Hearing Procedure Statute.   Now blight citations are authorized for municipalities under 7–148(c)7, H, X, V says that towns can enforce an anti-blight program so long as they also put in a citation hearing process and adopt 7–152c which the Town of Stratford did.

Now under 7–152c(g), there is a 30–day period from the date of a notice of assessment to file with the Superior Court an appeal.   The notice of assessment was provided on September 26th, 2011.   They had until October 25th or even the 24th of 2011 to make their appeal to the Superior Court.   The motion to open was filed March 30th of 2012 which is what we're sitting here and looking at today.

THE COURT:  I have that in front of me.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Correct.   It's the operative motion here.   Now, the law in Connecticut is a statutory right to appeal may be taken advantage of only by strict compliance of the statutory provisions by which it is created.

THE COURT:  So this is a more administrative type of a matter rather than just a run of the mill complaint?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Exactly.   The—what happens is, Your Honor, the—once the notice of assessment goes out, the town—

THE COURT:  And how is that done?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  It's sent via certified mail.

THE COURT:  And that was done in this case?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  It was.   And it was sent to the Sokols.   That was done September 26th, 2011.   What happens is they have 30 days to pay that assessment.   If it's not paid, then the town is required, or any municipality is required under 7–152c, to file a notice of the assessment with the Superior Court for an entry of judgment with a—plus it's an 8 dollar filing fee.   Now that can only be done within—has to be done 30 days after the notice of the assessment is sent and within one year following that.   So this was done, I think, December 12 or December 22 of 2011.   That was processed.   That was when the judgment, I want to say quote, unquote judgment, was entered by the Court, actually by the clerk, for the total assessment amount and the total amount, I think, is about 18,000 off the top of my head.   I don't recall the number, but essentially it was that date that it seems the defendant is trying to use as what would be the typical four-month period for a motion to open.

It's my position that—and there are Superior Court cases, unfortunately there is no appellate decisions on this, but which applied this Raines v. The Freedom of Information Commission which stated that statutory right to appeal may be taken advantage of only by strict compliance of the statutory provisions by which it is created.   Furthermore, it said such provisions are mandatory and if not complied with, the appeal is subject to dismissal.

I have two cases that I have copies of if you'd like to see.   I have—it's Yanaros v. Town of Cromwell, and McDonough v. The City of Hartford Department of Public Works which adopt the Raines language and say if you file a—an appeal with the Superior Court outside the 30–day period, it is subject to a motion to dismiss or a Court's dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.   The Courts are finding that it's a mandatory—a mandatory provision and a jurisdictional provision based on the fact that it—a statutory right to appeals must be strictly complied with.

So there are—those are two cases that, as I said, there's not appellate decisions on this necessarily, but what I'm looking at here is that if the defendant couldn't file an appeal under 7–152c(g) outside the 30–day period, they should not be able to file a motion to open which they did here outside of the 30–day period just because we had an entry of judgment at the Superior Court level.   I would say that they were akin to each other and I think that the Practice Book statement that a petition to open and then breaking down, that has to be according to the statutory time period saying that the time period for an appeal—it basically says the appeal and the motion to open, the petition to open in a citation, are one in the same.   You have a 30–day period.   It was not complied with.   I think it's abundantly clear that it was not complied with, and whether or not the property is today in compliance with the blight ordinances, I think is irrelevant to the question of whether this judgment should stay—should remain.

THE COURT:  Anything further?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Myself?

THE COURT:  Yes.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Just to—if you would like to talk about the substantive issues of the conditions of the property, I can speak to some of the conditions that we were dealing with prior to today and prior to an entry of a stipulated judgment which Attorney Thornberry alluded to earlier.

THE COURT:  Have they corrected all of the conditions?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  They corrected most of the big ones and I spoke to Attorney Thornberry when we were working out this stipulated judgment, and it was acknowledged that there were still some conditions on specifically a property at 145 Quenby Place.   There were buckets and barrels and some of them were tarped.   Other things—a good amount of—I don't want to call it debris, but for lack of a better term, items throughout the yard.   That was back on March 27th and 28th when Gary Lorentson from the Town of Stratford did that inspection.   If you recall, we were supposed to be here back around that time.

THE COURT:  I do recall.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  I think it was March 28th.   We were continued because you had a trial.   We were previously scheduled for March 7th and Attorney Thornberry had health conditions so we continued it.   I don't think that that should have any bearing on, just because of scheduling, that the defendant shouldn't—if it were to consider the—whether or not he's in compliance with the blight ordinances, I don't think that should have any bearing on the situation because back then he was not in compliance.   And you had previously given us on, I believe it was February l4th, you gave him an additional amount of time.   You basically—you asked the defendant, do you understand what's going on, you need to get these properties into compliance.   You gave him three weeks.   We rescheduled for that March 7th.   If the property wasn't in compliance then, I don't think it's relevant if it's in compliance today for the discussion of whether he was in compliance with your order.

THE COURT:  Wouldn't—how much of the assessment was due as of the initial hearing before me?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Which initial hearing?   I'm sorry.

THE COURT:  The hearing some months ago.   When was that, last September?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  The amount was set when this was entered, when the judgment was entered by the clerk.

THE COURT:  Oh, okay.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  So it doesn't—it wasn't accruing anything over time.

THE COURT:  I see.   I see.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  So it's not a matter of we're sitting here and waiting and waiting and the fine is going up.   It's a set amount.   It's a citation assessment that—

THE COURT:  About 18,000 as I recall.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  I think so.   I can pull out the record but it's more or less around that amount.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  I believe that's correct, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay. Anything further you'd like to say before I hear again from Mr. Thornberry?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Not unless you have any questions for me, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  None at the moment.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Okay. Thank you.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Judge, I just wanted to point out, I did have—the last time that we were here, I did have Mr. Fredette under subpoena and he came to testify that as far as he could see, everything was in compliance.   He is Chairman of Zoning.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  I would disagree with that.   I think he was—and I believe we addressed this at that time, is that Mr. Fredette was going to testify that on the specific properties of Morehouse and Nichols, that everything was in compliance.   The argument on that date was that conditions from one of those properties was moved to another property and that was—

THE COURT:  What was that, the Dahl Avenue?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Dahl Avenue, that's correct.   D–A–H–L Avenue.   So—

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  I would so stipulate to that.   I may have overgeneralized, but the bottom line is that all of these have been rectified, Your Honor.   This—what's going on here is equitable in nature and Your Honor has the right to do whatever he thinks is equitable.   Mrs. Sokol is 90, I believe 6.

THE COURT:  I know how old she is.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  I'm sorry, and neither one of them are people of means and the town has accomplished what they wanted to do.   They certainly have—

THE COURT:  Maybe just temporarily.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Well, I was just going to say that I'm sure that they're going to—the Sokols are going to keep things squared away given the nature of the stipulation that they signed because it—as soon as they are in violation, you know, they're going to be in—they're going to be in hot water and it's going to be costly to them.   You know, given that, all of the facts, Your Honor, I would ask that, you know, that you open it and set aside the fines.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  If I may, Your Honor.   I don't believe this is an equitable proceeding.   This is simply a procedural entrance of a judgment based on administrative hearings set at the municipal level.   This is all statutory.   This is not equitable.   I don't think that the Court has any equitable powers to consider opening the judgment other than the powers that are given to the Court by the statutes.   So, that's all I wanted to say.

THE COURT:  Anything further, Mr. Thornberry?

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  No, sir.

THE COURT:  How much did it cost the town to pursue this?   Approximately?

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  It could be a few thousand, off the top of my head, I'm not sure.   I mean, we've—I'm sorry I wasn't standing.   We didn't have, you know, we've had inspections done on a number of occasions.   We had substantive motion, objection to the motion to open, had a supplemental objection, it cost a little bit.   Aside from the fact that there are the concerns about neighbors complaining about the conditions of these properties, that the town is trying to do what it needs to do to make sure that the properties are intact, are kept in a condition that is orderly and the blight citation was issued, I believe, last time the defendant admitted that he had received notice, so that's all I have.

THE COURT:  Everybody been heard?

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  I don't think that the—actually the son, because I don't think the mother is, except the victim of the son, should go unscathed.

So I will reopen the citation, however, only to reduce the claim to $5,000 and reaffirm the fact that the citation will be carried out for the amount of $5,000.   Emphasize to your client that he can't just let's play fast and loose with the town.   He's got to, and this has been sort of a musical chairs type of a fact situation, so I will give you substantial relief but I don't think your client should go unscathed.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  Thank you, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  All right?   And let's not have it happen again and it come before me because it's—the next time it's quite serious.

ATTY. THORNBERRY:  I understand.   Thank you, sir.

THE COURT:  Okay.

ATTY. CIANCANELLI:  Thank you, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Court will stand in recess.

Honorable Edward F. Stodolink

Stodolink, Edward F., J.T.R.