Eastern Connecticut Cable Television, Inc. v. Town of Montville

• Decision Date: 29 April 1980
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: EASTERN CONNECTICUT CABLE TELEVISION, INC. v. TOWN OF MONTVILLE.

Page 905

429 A.2d 905

180 Conn. 409

EASTERN CONNECTICUT CABLE TELEVISION, INC. v. TOWN OF MONTVILLE.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Jan. 9, 1980.

Decided April 29, 1980.

Donald O'Brien, New London, for appellant (plaintiff).

James J. Devine, Norwich, for appellee (defendant).

Before COTTER, C. J., and LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, PETERS and HEALEY, JJ.

COTTER, Chief Justice.

The issue presented in this appeal is whether a communications tower owned by the plaintiff and located in the defendant town is subject to municipal taxation under § 12-64 of the General Statutes. ¹ The plaintiff appealed to the Superior Court from the action of the assessor of the town in listing the plaintiff's tower as taxable property on the assessment lists for the years 1975 to 1978 inclusive. Following a trial to the court, judgment was rendered in favor of the defendant from which the plaintiff has appealed.

The plaintiff, Eastern Connecticut Cable Television, Inc., is a community television antenna company. See General Statutes § 16-330. In 1974, the plaintiff erected a tower on its land located in the town of Montville which supports eighteen or nineteen television antennas which receive television broadcasts from various directions, and three microwave antennas which are used for transmitting. The tower is 385 feet high and is constructed of twenty tubular steel sections which are bolted together. The tower rests on a foundation of concrete measuring three feet by three feet and embedded six feet into the ground, and the bolt securing the tower to the foundation is embedded a foot or more into the concrete block. In addition, there are three sets of guy wires used to support the tower which are fastened to turnbuckles which in turn are fastened to metal bolts embedded in three additional blocks of concrete. There is a small building located next to the tower and cables from each of the antennas are connected to receivers located inside the building. The plaintiff does not contest the taxation of its land and the building next to the tower or the valuation attributed to its property. ²

Even assuming arguendo that the tower is so permanently affixed to the realty so as to have lost its character as personalty, ³ it does not necessarily follow that the tower is subject to taxation under § 12-64. ⁴ As the court noted in Hartford Electric Light Co. v. Wethersfield, 165 Conn. 211, 217, 332 A.2d 83, 87, "(t)he provision in § 12-64 which requires the assessors to set '(a)ny interest in real estate' in the list of the record owner of such interest has thus been definitively interpreted to mean no more than that the assessor must list any taxable interest, previously defined as '(d)welling houses, garages, barns, sheds, ... buildings, ... house lots,' in the name of the record owner of the freehold." Recognizing that the taxing authority of a municipality must conform strictly to the terms by which it was conferred; Pepin v. Danbury, 171 Conn. 74, 83, 368 A.2d 88; Low Stamford Corporation v. Stamford, 164 Conn. 178, 182, 319 A.2d 369; Consolidated Diesel Electric Corporation v. Stamford, 156 Conn. 33, 36, 238 A.2d 410; the town admits that the word "tower" is not specifically set out in General Statutes § 12-64 but contends that it is taxable impliedly either as a "building" or as "machinery" as those terms are utilized in the statute. See Connecticut Light & Power Co. v. Oxford, 101 Conn. 383, 126 A. 1.

A statutory term should be accorded its ordinary meaning "according to the commonly approved usage of the language." General Statutes § 1-1(a); Doe v. Institute of Living, Inc., 175 Conn. 49, 57, 392 A.2d 491; International Business Machines Corporation v. Brown, 167 Conn. 123, 134, 355 A.2d 236; and there is nothing in the statute to indicate that the word "building" is not to be taken in its ordinary and popular sense. Katsoff v. Lucertini, 141 Conn. 74, 78, 103 A.2d 812. The term "building" is defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (unabridged) as a "constructed edifice designed to stand more or less permanently, covering a space of land, usu. covered by a roof and more or less completely enclosed by walls, and serving as a dwelling, storehouse, factory, shelter for animals, or other useful structure distinguished from structures not designed for occupancy (as fences or monuments) and from structures not intended for use in one place (as boats or trailers) even though subject to occupancy." See, e. g., Parsons v. Van Wyck, 56 App.Div. 329, 336, 67 N.Y.S. 1054 (the term building does not include a monument 100 feet in height on a platform 120 feet long and erected in a city park); Small v. Parkway Auto Supplies, Inc., 258 Mass. 30, 34, 154 N.E. 521 (gasoline pump, underground tank and concrete pit were held not to be a building within the meaning of a restrictive covenant). It is significant to note that § 12-64 itself recognizes a distinction between "buildings" and "structures" in those provisions concerning the allocation of, and liability for taxes on "structures, buildings or other improvements" as between a lessor and lessee. In addition, this court has recognized that while a building is always a structure, all structures are not buildings. Katsoff v. Lucertini, supra; Hendryx Co. v. New Haven, 104 Conn. 632, 640, 134 A. 77. In Katsoff, for example, it was held that a provision contained in a restrictive covenant prohibiting the construction of a building higher than one story did not prohibit the construction of a billboard atop an existing one story building since the billboard, although concededly a structure, was not a building as that term was used in the covenant.

In determining the meaning of the term "building" as utilized in § 12-64, we are mindful of the rule of ejusdem generis which explains that "where a particular enumeration is followed by general descriptive words, the latter will be understood as limited in their scope to ... things of the same general kind or character as those specified in the particular enumeration." Easterbrook v. Hebrew Ladies Orphan Society, 85 Conn. 289, 296, 82 A. 561, 564; Hartford Electric Light Co. v. Wethersfield, supra, 218, 332 A.2d 83. Accordingly, the general term "all other...