ENRICO MANGIAFICO v. TOWN OF FARMINGTON ET AL.
(AC 37620)
Alvord, Keller and Beach, Js.
Argued January 31—officially released May 16, 2017
(Appeal from Superior Court, judicial district of Hartford, Scholl, J.)
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Kenneth R. Slater, Jr., with whom, on the brief, was Kelly C. McKeon for the appellees (defendants).
ALVORD, J. The plaintiff, Enrico Mangiafico, appeals from the judgment of the trial court dismissing four of the five counts in his complaint and rendering summary judgment on the remaining count. In his complaint, the plaintiff alleged that the actions of the municipal defendants, the town of Farmington (town) and five individuals1 sued in their official capacities (individual defendants), in placing his residential property on the town’s blight list, issuing citations for blight violations, imposing daily fines for blight violations and recording liens on his property for failing to pay those fines, violated his due process rights, constituted an unconstitutional taking of his property, and inflicted severe emotional distress. The plaintiff sought declaratory and injunctive relief, a discharge of the municipal blight liens, and indemnification by the town for damages caused by the individually named defendants.
On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court improperly granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss on the ground that he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as provided by statute and the Code of the Town of Farmington (code). Further, the plaintiff claims that the court improperly granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on his count seeking discharge of the municipal blight liens on the ground that he could not collaterally attack the validity of the assessments underlying those liens. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The following facts, as either alleged in the complaint or undisputed by the parties, and procedural history are relevant to the resolution of the claims on appeal. The plaintiff’s residence, located on Lakeview Drive in Farmington, suffered catastrophic damage prior to 2009, rendering it uninhabitable for a lengthy period of time. The plaintiff’s insurance carrier, which directed the demolition and rebuilding of the home, caused delays outside of the plaintiff’s control. He brought an action against the insurance carrier, and a settlement was reached in August, 2011. In July, 2012, a group of residents in the plaintiff’s neighborhood filed a complaint with the town manager concerning the appearance of the plaintiff’s property. Shortly thereafter, a town official notified the plaintiff of the complaint.
Prior to 2012, the town adopted chapter 88 of the code (blight ordinance) as one of its municipal ordinances. The provisions of chapter 88 address vacant blighted buildings that adversely affect property values within the town and that threaten the health, safety and general welfare of its residents. Section 88-4 of the blight ordinance sets forth procedures for placing properties on a blighted property list. The blight ordinance further allows the town manager, or his designee, to issue citations and to impose a penalty of not more
On August 14, 2012, the town council voted to add the plaintiff’s property to the town’s blighted property list. No advance notice was provided to the plaintiff that such an action would be taken at that meeting. The town manager sent the plaintiff a letter on August 22, 2012, advising him that his property had been placed on the town’s list of blighted properties. The letter further required the plaintiff to undertake certain improvements prior to October 1, 2012.
Commencing on September 4, 2012, the town issued citations and imposed a penalty of $100 per day against the plaintiff for his alleged violations of the blight ordinance. Pursuant to § 88-5 of the blight ordinance, on October 15, 2012, the plaintiff requested and attended a hearing to challenge his liability. At that hearing, the building citation hearing officer reduced the amount of the plaintiff’s fines, for the period of September 4 through October 15, 2012, from $4000 to $2000. The hearing officer further required the plaintiff to submit a building plan to municipal officials within thirty days of the hearing. The hearing officer refused, however, to consider the plaintiff’s challenges to the designation of his property as a blighted building or the procedures involved in that designation. On February 5, 2013, a $2000 municipal real estate lien was placed on the plaintiff’s property for his failure to pay the assessment entered by the hearing officer on October 15, 2012.
For the period January 4 to February 19, 2013, the town imposed, on February 21, 2013, an additional $4700 in daily fines. On April 16, 2013, the town placed a second municipal real estate lien on the plaintiff’s property for his failure to pay the $4700 assessed by the hearing officer on February 21, 2013. According to the plaintiff, he received no notice of the scheduled February 21, 2013 hearing nor was he given an opportunity to contest the designation of his property as blighted.
On July 2, 2013, the plaintiff attended another hearing before the same hearing officer, seeking to challenge the blight designation of his property and the fines imposed for the alleged violations of the blight ordinance. The hearing officer reiterated his position that the plaintiff could not contest the blight designation at that administrative hearing, and he sought an explanation for the plaintiff’s failure to complete construction pursuant to his submitted plan. On July 10, 2013, the hearing officer sent a letter to the plaintiff requiring specified improvements and construction to be completed by September 9, 2013, in exchange for the reduc-
The fines that remain and are at issue are those imposed from September 4 through October 15, 2012, in the reduced amount of $2000, and the fines imposed from January 1 through February 19, 2013, in the amount of $4700. On September 6, 2013, the plaintiff commenced the present action alleging that the defendants’ conduct constituted a violation of his due process rights and a taking under the federal and state constitutions, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. He sought declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, a discharge of the municipal real estate liens and indemnification by the town for the actions of the individually named defendants. On November 15, 2013, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss all five counts of the plaintiff’s complaint on the ground that he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies pursuant to the code and the statutory remedy set forth in
On May 20, 2014, the court issued its memorandum of decision dismissing four of the five counts of the plaintiff’s complaint. The court concluded: ‘‘[T]he exhaustion doctrine requires not only that a party avail himself of any remedies before the administrative agency but that a party who has a statutory right to appeal from a decision of an administrative agency cannot, instead of appealing, bring an independent action to test the very issues which the appeal was designed to test. Here an appeal to the Superior Court from the decisions of the municipal hearing officer would have provided the plaintiff with a de novo hearing in which he could have contested the imposition of the fines as well as the designation of his property as blighted.’’ The court further determined that none of the exceptions to the exhaustion doctrine applied in this case. With respect to count four, however, which sought a discharge of the municipal real estate liens, the court concluded that it had subject matter jurisdiction ‘‘to determine whether it can treat the antiblight lien as a property tax lien, and, if so, whether the antiblight lien may be discharged as such.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Accordingly, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss count four of the plaintiff’s complaint.3
On October 1, 2014, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on the remaining count of the plaintiff’s complaint, claiming that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law because the underlying assessments were valid and final. The defendants
I
The plaintiff’s first claim is that the court improperly dismissed four of the five counts in his complaint on the ground that he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Specifically, the plaintiff argues that he was not required to exhaust administrative remedies because (1) federal civil rights actions brought in state courts do not require the exhaustion of administrative remedies, (2) his complaint sought relief for an unconstitutional taking of his property without just compensation, and (3) even if the exhaustion doctrine is applicable, ‘‘the sheer number of individual fines, the inadequacy of remedies contained in the statutory citation appeal process, and . . . the ongoing nature of the defendants’ conduct made such statutory procedures expensive, burdensome and futile.’’ The defendants respond that the trial court properly determined that the remedy provided by the code and
We begin with the appropriate standard of review and legal principles that guide our analysis of the plaintiff’s claims on appeal. ‘‘A motion to dismiss . . . properly attacks the jurisdiction of the court, essentially asserting that the plaintiff cannot as a matter of law and fact state a cause of action that should be heard by the court. . . . A motion to dismiss tests, inter alia, whether, on the face of the record, the court is without jurisdiction. . . . When a . . . court decides a jurisdictional question raised by a pretrial motion to dismiss, it must consider the allegations of the complaint in their most favorable light. . . . In this regard, a court must take the facts to be those alleged in the complaint, including those facts necessarily implied from the allegations, construing them in a manner most favorable to the pleader.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.)
‘‘Because the exhaustion [of administrative remedies] doctrine implicates subject matter jurisdiction, [the court] must decide as a threshold matter whether that doctrine requires dismissal of the [plaintiff’s] claim. . . . [Additionally] [b]ecause [a] determination regarding a trial court’s subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law, our review is plenary. . . .
‘‘It is a settled principle of administrative law that if an adequate administrative remedy exists, it must be exhausted before the Superior Court will obtain jurisdiction to act in the matter.’’ (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Fairchild Heights Residents Assn., Inc. v. Fairchild Heights, Inc., 310 Conn. 797, 807–808, 82 A.3d 602 (2014). ‘‘There are two ways to determine whether an administrative remedy has been exhausted. [When] a statute has established a procedure to redress a particular wrong a person must follow the specified remedy and may not institute a proceeding that might have been permissible in the absence of such a statutory procedure. . . . When, however, a statutory requirement of exhaustion is not explicit, courts are guided by [legislative] intent in determining whether application of the doctrine would be consistent with the statutory scheme. . . . Consequently, [t]he requirement of exhaustion may arise from explicit statutory language or from an administrative scheme providing for agency relief.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 808.
In the present case, there are town ordinances, a rule of practice, and a statute that address the procedure to be used when contesting liability for fines imposed for blight violations. We begin with the statutory scheme.
Pursuant to this statutory authority, the town adopted chapter 88 of the code, the town’s blight ordinance, which, inter alia, defines blighted premises, prohibits the creation or maintenance of blighted premises, provides for the creation of a blighted property list, sets forth enforcement and hearing procedures for property owners, authorizes penalties of not more than $100 dollars for each day that the property is in violation of the blight ordinance, and provides that the town may impose and record a lien upon the real estate for unpaid fines.
The statutory citation hearing procedure, set forth in detail in
In this case, the plaintiff did request and attend two hearings before the citation hearing officer, at which time he attempted to challenge the designation of his property as a blighted building. He claims that the hearing officer would not allow him to contest the blight designation through the administrative hearing process. He additionally challenged the imposition of fines for the alleged violations of the blight ordinance. When the hearing officer issued his decisions, however, it is undisputed that the plaintiff did not take an appeal to the Superior Court pursuant to
We begin with the plaintiff’s argument that he properly sought declaratory and injunctive relief because the defendants’ conduct constituted an unconstitutional taking of his property and a violation of his due process rights. He claims that because he has raised constitutional issues, the citation appeals process provides an inadequate remedy at law and he was entitled to pursue alternative relief.6
We agree that the citation hearing officer, in an administrative hearing, was not authorized to resolve constitutional claims. It is a ‘‘well established common-law principle that administrative agencies lack the authority to determine constitutional questions.’’ Cumberland Farms, Inc. v. Groton, 262 Conn. 45, 64, 808 A.2d 1107 (2002). Nevertheless, ‘‘[i]t [also] is well established that a plaintiff may not circumvent the requirement to exhaust available administrative remedies merely by asserting a constitutional claim. . . . As this court has stated on several occasions, [s]imply bringing a constitutional challenge to an agency’s actions will not necessarily excuse a failure to follow an available statutory appeal process. . . . [D]irect adjudication even of constitutional claims is not warranted when the relief sought by a litigant might conceivably have been obtained through an alternative [statutory] procedure . . . which [the litigant] has chosen to ignore. . . . [W]e continue to limit any judicial bypass of even colorable constitutional claims to instances of demonstrable futility in pursuing an available administrative remedy.’’ (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) St. Paul Travelers Cos. v. Kuehl, 299 Conn. 800, 813, 12 A.3d 852 (2011).7 ‘‘Limiting the judicial bypass of colorable constitutional claims to those instances of demonstrable futility is consistent with our duty to eschew unnecessarily deciding constitutional questions . . . .’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id.
We are not persuaded that it would have been futile for the plaintiff to raise his claims, challenging the blight designation of his property and the assessments and liens imposed on his property, in the citation appeal process set forth in
The plaintiff argues that ‘‘bringing scores if not hundreds of separate citation appeals would have been futile and financially onerous.’’ We fail to understand how bringing an appeal from the hearing officer’s assessment determinations to the Superior Court pursuant to
For these reasons, we conclude that the remedy provided in the citation appeal process set forth in
II
The plaintiff next claims that the court improperly rendered summary judgment on the final count of his complaint, in which he sought the discharge of the municipal blight liens on his property. Specifically, he claims that the court erroneously concluded that he
‘‘The law governing summary judgment and the accompanying standard of review are well settled. Practice Book § [17-49] requires that judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. A material fact is a fact that will make a difference in the result of the case. . . . The facts at issue are those alleged in the pleadings. . . .
‘‘In seeking summary judgment, it is the movant who has the burden of showing the nonexistence of any issue of fact. The courts are in entire agreement that the moving party for summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue as to all the material facts, which, under applicable principles of substantive law, entitle him to a judgment as a matter of law. The courts hold the movant to a strict standard. To satisfy his burden the movant must make a showing that it is quite clear what the truth is, and that excludes any real doubt as to the existence of any genuine issue of material fact. . . . As the burden of proof is on the movant, the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the opponent.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Brusby v. Metropolitan District, 160 Conn. App. 638, 645–46, 127 A.3d 257 (2015). ‘‘Our review of the trial court’s decision to grant a motion for summary judgment is plenary.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 646.
In his complaint, the plaintiff sought discharge of the municipal real estate lien recorded on February 5, 2013, to secure the unpaid $2000 assessment for fines entered by the hearing officer on October 15, 2012, and the municipal real estate lien recorded on April 16, 2013, to secure the unpaid $4700 assessment for additional fines entered by the hearing officer on February 21, 2013.13 When the defendants filed their motion for summary judgment on this count of the complaint, they submitted an affidavit by the town manager attesting to the procedure employed in securing and recording the blight liens. The plaintiff filed an objection to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, but did not
Following a hearing, the court issued its January 7, 2015 memorandum of decision granting the defendants’ motion and rendering summary judgment on count four of the plaintiff’s complaint. The court first noted that it was undisputed that the liens were placed on the plaintiff’s property because he failed to pay the assessments for fines entered by the hearing officer on October 15, 2012, and February 21, 2013. The court also noted that the plaintiff, by letter dated October 7, 2014, demanded that the town discharge the liens, claiming that they were invalid. Additionally, the court determined that the plaintiff did not dispute that the procedural steps in securing the liens were followed by the town.
Although the plaintiff claimed that
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.