Kenneth Slater Jr., from Halloran & Sage’s Environmental and Land Use Law Group, successfully argued a municipal zoning case before the Connecticut Supreme Court and obtained a reversal of the judgments of an Appellant Court and the Superior Court against his client.
The issue at hand in Kraiza v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 304 Conn. 447 (2012), was the denial of Mr. Kraiza’s proposal to subdivide his 20 acres of property into eight building lots. The Town of Hartland’s Planning and Zoning Commission denied his application on the ground that the street proposed to be constructed by Mr. Kraiza, to be known as Hazel Lane, was in violation of a subdivision regulation imposing a 1,200 foot length limit on dead end roads. Hazel Lane would intersect with an existing 3,500 foot road known as Eastwood Drive. Eastwood Drive is configured as a loop with only one egress to adjoining Route 20. The commission viewed Hazel Lane to be an extension of Eastwood Drive and determined that their aggregate length was far in excess of the limit for a permanent dead-end street.
Both the Superior Court and the Appellate Court agreed with the commission and denied Mr. Kraiza’s appeal. Ken was then retained by Mr. Kraiza to petition the Supreme Court to obtain permission to appeal the Appellate Court’s decision.
The petition was granted. On appeal, the Supreme Court agreed with Ken’s position that the commission acted improperly. The court agreed that Hazel Lane and Eastwood Drive should be treated as separate roads for the purposes of the subdivision regulations and, as a result, Hazel Lane was in compliance with the road length requirement regardless of the length of Eastwood Drive. By eliminating the commission’s lynchpin in its denial of the plaintiff’s proposal, he earned a victory for his client at the highest judicial level in the state.