CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed that a lower court did not have jurisdiction in a lawsuit involving Xenia Hotels & Resorts' 2019 tax assessment.
Xenia owns the Charleston Marriott property in Charleston and filed a notice of intent to file a protest in February 2019 before the Kanawha County Board of Commissioners, which was sitting as the Board of Assessment Appeals, according to the March 23 memorandum decision.
Xenia was challenging the valuation of the property from the 2019 assessment and submitted that the appraised value was in excess of the market value.
However, the Kanawha County Assessor denied the petitioner’s request for review of the property appraisal because the petitioner’s challenge was untimely. The parties were scheduled to go before the commission on Oct. 10, 2019, but Xenia did not show up to the hearing and the appeal was marked as withdrawn. However, Xenia then filed an appeal with Kanawha Circuit Court on Nov. 12, 2019.
The respondent filed a motion to dismiss the following month and the court granted the motion to dismiss, to which Xenia appealed to the West Virginia Supreme Court.
"Petitioner does not contest the fact that it did not 'appear' at the scheduled hearing, but petitioner maintains that it was told not to appear by someone in the Assessor’s Office," the court writes. "Even assuming that someone from the Assessor’s Office told petitioner not to appear, a fact not evident from the record, it would not be reasonable for petitioner to rely upon this representation, and the Assessor’s Office would not have had authority to bind respondent sitting in its adjudicatory capacity."
The court found Xenia's unsupported arguments in its brief to be insufficient.
The Supreme Court concluded that the circuit court did not err when it found it lacked jurisdiction on the appeal.
W.Va. Supreme Court of Appeals case number: 20-0068
