For What It May Be Worth

In a victory for property taxpayers across the nutmeg state, the Connecticut Supreme Court recently held in 7 Germantown Rd., LLC v. City of Danbury, No. 21024, 2025 WL 309848 (Conn. Jan. 28, 2025) (“Germantown”) that a taxpayer’s failure to timely satisfy the appraisal filing requirement pursuant to C.G.S. § 12-117a does not result in the automatic dismissal of its case.

Pursuant to C.G.S. § 12-117a, in Superior Court property tax appeals involving real property assessed at one million dollars or more, a taxpayer “shall file with the court, not later than one hundred twenty days after [commencing the court case] an appraisal of the real property.” Further, “[i]f such appraisal is not timely filed the court may dismiss the [case].” The statute also gives the trial court discretion to extend the 120-day deadline for good cause shown.

The plaintiffs in Germantown produced their appraisal reports to the City of Danbury but failed to file the reports with the court as the law requires.

The City argued that the plaintiffs’ failure to file their reports with the trial court triggered mandatory dismissals of their cases.

The Connecticut Supreme Court disagreed.

Focusing on the statutory mandate that plaintiffs “shall” file an appraisal within 120 days, while permitting that the trial court “may” dismiss a tax appeal for failure to timely file the appraisal, the Germantown Court noted that when a statute uses both “shall” and “may,” it suggests an intent to apply the terms differently—“shall” as mandatory and “may” as discretionary.

Since the Germantown Court found dismissal to be discretionary when a taxpayer fails to timely satisfy the statutory appraisal requirement, it upheld the trial court’s decision not to dismiss the plaintiffs’ cases and remanded the tax appeals back to the trial court to be decided on the merits.

The Germantown decision can be seen as a victory for taxpayers since it reinforces the discretion the legislature placed with the Superior Court to extend the 120-day appraisal deadline and to decide, on a case by case basis, the fate of a tax appeal when that deadline is missed. The decision is also a reminder to taxpayer plaintiffs to strictly adhere to the requirements of the statute and proactively seek extensions of the appraisal filing deadline where needed.

For those interested, a more comprehensive analysis of the Germantown decision can be found here:

Jurisdiction 101: Connecticut Supreme Court Hands Down Win For Taxpayers