Intervention by Taxpayer Denied in New Jersey Tax Appeal

In another recent opinion, Farmland Dairies, Inc. v. Bor. of Wallington, the Tax Court of New Jersey addressed the actions of a non-party private taxpayer who filed a motion to intervene in a pending appeal of Farmland Dairies, Inc.  Farmland Dairies, Inc. filed direct appeals to the tax court for tax years 2014, 2015, and 2016.  A private taxpayer of the Borough, however, filed a motion to intervene in the pending appeals alleging that the subject property was under assessed and the outcome of the pending appeals would cause him to be “aggrieved or discriminated due to the underassessment” of the subject property.  The intervenor had not independently filed any complaints challenging the assessment of the Farmland Dairies, Inc. property for any of the tax years at issue.

The Tax Court acknowledged that the intervenor, as a property owner and taxpayer in the Borough, had standing to challenge the assessment of the subject property.  However, an application for intervention is subject to the applicable statute of limitations which in tax appeals would be governed by N.J.S.A. 54:3-21.  The Tax Court ruled that the taxpayer here attempted to file a motion to intervene and circumvent the applicable statute of limitations which is strictly construed.  Furthermore, the court noted that the relation-back doctrine would also be inapplicable since the movant is not attempting to amend an already timely-filed pleading but instead asking to join in a matter in which he/she is not a party to and further to assert a new claim out of time.  Consequently, the Tax Court denied the taxpayer’s motion to intervene.

A copy of the Tax Court’s published opinion in Farmland Dairies, Inc. can be found here.