The City of Danbury, Connecticut, has been ordered to pay $16,843,750 to plaintiffs John and Cindy Girolametti and Party Depot, Inc., a family business in the Danbury area, by a jury in Waterbury Superior Court. A team of Barclay Damon attorneys led by partner Brian Donnell represented the plaintiffs in the multi-million dollar, years-long lawsuit.
The city and one of its building officials were found to have acted with reckless disregard for the health and safety of the public during the permitting, construction, and inspection phases of developing an expanded, 30,000 square-foot wholesale display and storage facility at Party Depot’s 43 South Street retail location in Danbury. As a result, the building had never been able to comply with structural storage loading and other requirements of the building code.
“The city’s reckless disregard for the building code’s requirements led to the contractor being allowed to build a structure that could not be safely used for the wholesale business for which it had been designed and financed,” Donnell said. “The Girolamettis have been severely harmed by having to pay all of the mortgage, interest, taxes, maintenance, repairs, and other costs for 14 years while not being able to generate any additional revenues from the planned wholesale business.”
Despite not being up to code, the city granted permits and a certificate of occupancy for the project without stopping the inspection and approval process so that the contractor and other involved parties would have had to redesign the building and remediate the deficiencies.
The verdict was delivered after a five-week trial.
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