New Haven Independent

For more than two years, the town had been reluctant to settle, refusing to come to any compromise with Bill and Dawn Massey. The lawsuit was filed in 2004 in an effort to change the category “custom” that a part-time assessor had applied to the Masseys’ newly constructed house. The part-time assessor was Michael Milici, who serves as the East Haven assessor and is the former chair of the Branford Democratic Party, court papers said. The “custom” designation increases dramatically the tax cost per square foot and does so for the life of the house. A number of other lawsuits have been filed to try to change the custom designation, which Barbara Neal, the town assessor agreed to after Vision Appraisal, Inc., the town’s revaluation company, suggested it.
The judge, Lynda B. Munro, who oversees one of the complex litigation parts in Waterbury (it was moved from New Haven some months back), arrived on the bench at 10 a.m., greeted the attorneys and the Masseys and said, “I am under the impression you are near to a settlement.”
That was true at 10 a.m. and it was still true at noon, when all of a sudden, as both sides seemed ready to address the judge, sirens went off throughout the courthouse. It seemed like a fitting moment. But then everyone was ordered out of the building. Turned out it was a bomb scare. Down the steps we went and some minutes later the court reassembled on the sunlit lawn across the street. Both sides were close to ironing out the details when the town’s attorneys, Shelley Marcus of the Marcus law firm and Daniel C. DeMerchant of Howd & Ludorf in Hartford, ran into a roadblock. It turned out that one of the town’s employees was balking.
The judge decided at this point to go off the record, so it remains unclear who blocked the process and why. The problem apparently did not lie with the town’s attorneys or the Masseys. “We have to make some recommendations,” DeMerchant explained as the lawn side conference ended. The parties return to court July 17th at 10 a.m. Assuming a settlement is reached, the judge must still evaluate appraisal reports and come up with the final figures on the Massey house.
Howd & Ludorf wanted to withdraw from the case as of June 7th because the town’s insurance company would no longer pay the firm’s legal fees. Dawn Massey wanted the Marcus law firm to withdraw because she planned to call Ed Marcus, the town’s attorney and Shelley’s father, to testify about his own house designation —contemporary— as opposed to custom.
DeMerchant was told to stay on at least until today, the start of the trial, but it looks like the firm’s time, and billing, now will be extended. What this means is the town is currently paying two sets of attorneys and their firms to handle a case brought by two dogged pro-se litigants and Mrs. Massey’s mother, Misty Williams, who served as her agent.
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