8 Conn. App. 209 | Conn. App. Ct. | 1986
In this appeal the named defendant
The present appeal raises eight claims of error in the court’s decision by which Tucker disputes the constitutionality of both the property tax in general, and the interest rate payable to the city on delinquent tax assessments in specific. He also disputes the court’s rulings on his counterclaims regarding the effect of the judgments in his earlier tax appeals. Subsequent to the filing of the present appeal, the city moved for a judgment of strict foreclosure, which was granted on March 11, 1985. Tucker then amended this appeal to include four additional issues raised by the intervening proceedings.
We turn first to Tucker’s claim that his two prior tax appeals were dispositive of the correct amount of each of the assessments involved in this case. With respect to the 1977 assessment which Tucker claims was encompassed by the judgment regarding his appeal from the city’s 1972 assessment, we note that judgment
Conversely, the court did err in concluding that the judgment in Tucker’s appeal from the city’s 1978 reassessment applied only to the assessment for that year, and in rendering judgment for the plaintiff on Tucker’s second, third and sixth counterclaims insofar as they relate to the tax liens for taxes on the lists of October 1, 1979, October 1,1980, and October 1,1981. The judg
“Item True and Actual Value Assessed Value
70% of True
Land $19,800 $13,860
Building $60,200 $42,140
Total $86,000[
and it is further adjudged that the Board of Tax Review correct the assessment against the applicant accordingly.”
Although there is some support for the city’s claim that this judgment does not accurately reflect the court’s intended ruling in that it contains valuations for the land and building which do not correctly add up to the total fair market and assessment values stated in the judgment,
We have reviewed the remainder of Tucker’s claims of error, and we conclude that they are without merit. Although the amount of his tax arrearage, as found by the court, is in error, the court’s later conclusion allowing the foreclosure of the plaintiff’s tax liens per se was not. Thus, we must remand this case for a new determination of the correct amount of Tucker’s tax debt and of the plaintiffs liens upon that debt. Because of our remand, and as an adjunct to it, however, we are compelled at this time to find error in the subsequent judgment of strict foreclosure. Since the judgment of strict foreclosure was rendered pursuant to the terms of the earlier decision for the plaintiff as to the amount of Tucker’s tax arrearage, it falls with its foundation. Thus, we must reverse that judgment with direction to the trial court to deny the plaintiff’s motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure until it is resubmitted
There is error, the judgment is set aside and the case is remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
The remaining defendants, Burritt Mutual Savings and Loan Association, Laundry Mart, Inc., and the Metropolitan District have an interest in the property in question by virtue of the named defendant’s obligations to them secured by, or involving, that property. They are not parties to this appeal.
Tucker claimed that every year between 1972 and 1977 was covered by the judgment in this appeal because of the effect of General Statutes § 12-118, which provides in part that “[t]he amount to which the assessment is so reduced shall be the assessed value of such property on the grand lists for succeeding years until the tax assessor finds that the value of the applicant’s property has increased or decreased.”
As with the years between 1972 and 1977, Tucker claimed that the assessment for each year after 1978 was covered by the judgment in the tax appeal which he had filed with respect to the 1978 reassessment by virtue of General Statutes § 12-118.
With respect to the 1972 tax year, during the course of trial, the parties stipulated that Tucker was entitled to a refund for overpayment of his 1972 property taxes in the amount of $6643.40 with interest from August 31, 1981, at the legal rate.
Stanley V. Tucker v. City of Hartford, Superior Court, Judicial District of Hartford-New Britain at Hartford, No. 287865 (July 17, 1985).
After the trial court’s memorandum of decision issued, but before the city moved for judgment of strict foreclosure, Tucker filed this appeal. This court granted the city’s motion to dismiss that portion of the appeal pertaining only to the court’s rulings on its complaint since no final judgment had yet issued thereon. Tucker, nonetheless, briefed those issues dismissed by this court. We do not, however, review them here. The plaintiff conceded the finality of the judgment on the counterclaims.
The correct total should have been $80,000.
The correct total should have been $56,000.
We are unable to determine, on the record before us, whether the correct assessments were considered by the city’s tax office in levying the tax on the property involved for the year 1978.
We must note our concern with the trial court’s adoption and incorporation by reference in its memorandum of decision of the city’s fifty-nine page trial brief “as the basis for its decision,” rather than finding its own facts and making independent conclusions. We have, in the past, expressed our displeasure with a trial court’s adoption verbally or mechanically of a party’s proposed findings of fact. Grayson v. Grayson, 4 Conn. App. 275, 279-85, 494 A.2d 576 (1985). The adoption and incorporation of a party’s lengthy trial brief in the court’s memorandum as the basis for its decision is a practice even less acceptable than the literal adoption of findings of fact proposed by a party, since a trial brief is not drafted by a party so much to present an adequate factual basis for deciding the case as it is by design and the rules of advocacy to provide a legal basis for decision in favor of the subscriber. It is not to be treated by the court as judicial precedent