Property owner pressing case against Mohegan official over ‘stone groupings’

AT&T wanted to place a cell tower on Drabik’s Ancient Highway parcel

East Lyme — John Drabik says he’s being stonewalled in a two-year-old dispute with the Mohegan Tribe, which claimed putting a cell tower on an Ancient Highway parcel he owns could impact the “overall integrity of the landscape.”

It has to do with “substantial stone groupings” that may or may not exist on a neighboring parcel.

Drabik’s attorney, Eric Garofano, filed a lawsuit last month against Elaine Thomas, the tribe’s deputy historic preservation officer, alleging that she ignored requests to discuss the matter and refused to identify the location of the stone groupings. The alleged refusal to communicate had prompted Drabik to file a so-called bill of discovery in September 2015, asking that a New London Superior Court judge order Thomas and her boss, James Quinn, to submit to depositions.

The tribe won a dismissal on jurisdictional grounds, with Judge Leeland Cole-Chu finding that Thomas and Quinn were entitled to tribal sovereign immunity from lawsuits. Drabik appealed the ruling to the state Appellate Court and filed suit in Mohegan Tribal Court. Both actions are pending.

The Superior Court suit filed last month names Thomas in her individual capacity rather than as an employee of the tribe.

“We believe Lewis v. Clarke gives us the right to sue in Superior Court,” Garofano said, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case involving a Mohegan Sun limousine driver. In that case, the high court ruled 8-0 that an Indian tribe’s sovereign immunity from lawsuits does not extend to an employee of the tribe who’s sued over actions he took within the scope of his employment if he’s sued as an individual rather than as a tribal employee.

The suit says Thomas asserted in 2015 that because of the archaeological features of an Ancient Highway parcel owned by a third party, a proposed cell tower on Drabik’s adjacent property would impact the parcel’s “view shed” — the area visible from the parcel — “and possibly impact the ‘overall integrity of the landscape.’”

But, the suit says, a tower on Drabik’s property would cause no such adverse effect “because no such stone features, cultural features or landscapes exist in the area.”

“The allegation is that it’s a misrepresentation,” Garofano said of Thomas’s assertion. “They never cited them (stone groupings) before.

AT&T, which terminated its lease on the Drabik property, hired its own consultants and they didn’t find anything.”

The suit says the tribe raised no objections during the application processes for “seventeen communications towers and power mounts as well as two water tanks and two roof top installations” located within about four miles of Drabik’s Ancient Highway property.

Drabik claims Thomas was negligent in claiming the existence of “cultural stone features” that would be impacted by a cell tower on Drabik’s property and that the claim led AT&T to abandon its interest in the property, costing him financially.

AT&T considered an alternative site for a cell tower on Boston Post Road and ultimately settled on yet another site in The Orchards development.

Chuck Bunnell, the tribe’s chief of staff, declined to comment, saying the tribe does not discuss pending litigation.