SHERMAN – A mom-and-pop scrap yard that has avoided a cease-and-desist order for three years by arguing that construction activities on the property predate Sherman’s 1937 zoning code has exhausted its last hope to continue operating as a grandfathered business.
Joel and Roberta Judd, a community-minded couple at the center of a complaint about junk, noise and unpermitted commercial activity at their home business on Spring Lake Road, saw their last legal option thwarted last month when Connecticut’s Appellate Court refused to hear their case.
That means the Judds must comply with a 2022 order by Sherman’s zoning enforcement officer to remove “multiple storage trailers, multiple 55-gallon drums … (a) house trailer, construction supplies, various equipment material piles, and other items."
“We have asked town officials to begin immediate enforcement action,” said Dan Casagrande, a lawyer who represents a Sherman homeowner involved in the case and who serves as Danbury’s chief legal officer.
It was the Sherman homeowner whose complaint about the construction yard’s non-conforming activities sparked the three-year land use battle in Fairfield County’s smallest town.
After the zoning enforcement officer ordered stockpiling and storage activities to cease, the Judds took their case to Sherman’s five-member Zoning Board of Appeals.
The appeals board tried to find a balance between modern property rights and respect for preexisting conditions. The result was a 2023 decision to permit some activities, including gravel and mulch storage, and heavy equipment and truck storage. The appeals board denied other uses, including heavy equipment repair, school bus storage and shipping container storage.
Neither the Judds nor the homeowner who made the original complaint agreed with the compromise decision. Both parties filed an appeal in state Superior Court.
In May, Superior Court Judge Barbara Brazzel-Massaro threw out the compromise decision reached by Sherman’s appeals board, calling it “unreasonable and legally flawed” because appeals board members “arbitrarily determined what uses it believed should permitted.”
Moreover, the judge ruled, the good reputation of the community-minded Judds apparently colored the decision of some appeals board members.
“(I)t is obvious that opinion, speculation, confusion and loyalty to a long-time resident and volunteer for Sherman guided the board in their decision and not a thorough analysis of the actual evidence presented,” the judge wrote in a May 2 ruling.
The judge’s ruling put the 2022 cease-and-desist order back into force.
The Judds weren’t done fighting, however. They asked the Connecticut Appellate Court to review their case.
Their case should be reviewed, the Judds argued, in part, because “(T)here was sufficient evidence in the record to support the … conclusion that each of the permitted uses had been occurring on the property on or before 1936.”
In late July, the Appellate Court responded with a single word to the Judd's review request: denied.
Attorneys for the Judds did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.