The landlords of a Honda dealership engaged in “unfair business extortion,” fraudulently misrepresented the possession of the property and wrongfully delayed building of the shop for greater than two years, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom has dominated.

The sharply worded choice upheld an award of $10,517,250, plus legal professional charges, in favor of what was then Majestic Honda, which sought to relocate from Rhode Island to Massachusetts. It’s now Balise Honda of North Attleboro.

In 2016, Majestic signed a 23-year lease for the location from a gaggle of companies related with Alfredo Dos Anjos. Beneath the lease, Majestic was to demolish current buildings and construct two new ones. The location is close to a CarMax retailer owned by Dos Anjos on town’s “Auto Street,” the choice stated.

What occurred was “a bitter and protracted dispute” during which seller principal James Balise was coerced to promote to Dos Anjos for under $1 an adjoining parcel he’d purchased for $800,000, Chief Justice Scott Kafker wrote within the unanimous opinion. He stated Dos Anjos additionally gave “pretextual causes” for terminating the lease and “willfully and wrongly strung Majestic alongside as a way to extract undeserved advantages.”

The Jan. 24 choice detailed a collection of steps the Dos Anjos companies took to impede Majestic from getting obligatory municipal permits for the undertaking; to strive limiting use of the location completely to a Honda retailer, thereby stopping Majestic from housing different manufacturers there; to terminate the lease; and to not reinstate it. The courtroom additionally stated the companies deliberately made false statements and “did nothing to appropriate their misrepresentations as to the possession of the premises.”

The lease was reinstated after Majestic received at trial, and building proceeded whereas the Supreme Courtroom attraction was pending.

The shop opened final Could.

“Our dedication has all the time been to serve the North Attleboro neighborhood and our prospects,” Balise advised Automotive Information.

Within the choice, the courtroom stated, “The defendants’ conduct — which included fraudulent misrepresentations and pretextual contractual objections designed to string alongside [Majestic] and coerce extra concession to which the defendants weren’t entitled below the lease — meets the usual for unfair or misleading practices.”

It upheld the trial courtroom’s discovering that the misconduct delayed the event and operation of the shop by greater than two years and stated proof of unfair and misleading conduct was adequate to justify the courtroom’s doubling of the compensatory damages.

Protection lawyer Robert Cordy stated, “The intensive reality findings made by the trial choose made the attraction of his rulings very difficult.”

Cordy, of Boston, stated the case now could be being mediated towards a last settlement.