(Precedent) Singing In Harmony

The Law Court recently cleaned up a tangle of legal precedent regarding the appropriate means for challenging a property tax assessment, explaining and harmonizing two hundred years of case law. Oakes v. Town of Richmond establishes clear guidelines for tax appeals.

The issue in Oakes was the proper procedural vehicle for contesting a property tax that a taxpayer claims should not have been assessed at all. In that case, a taxpayer had challenged a tax assessment based on an argument that she did not own the subject property. The Superior Court dismissed the claim, concluding that it could not be brought via a declaratory judgment action. The Law Court reversed.

In a lengthy, and scholarly, recitation, the Court traced the two-hundred-year history of its precedent addressing the question whether particular property tax claims must be brought in an administrative abatement proceeding or in a declaratory judgment action. As that recitation shows, the relevant