Even though a jury awarded Elia Cornejo-Lopez $22,350 in damages in her defamation lawsuit against Jeffrey Michael Lorence, a final judgment has not been rendered by visiting judge Robert Garza and defendant has announced he will appeal the verdict.
Court records indicate that jury verdict and damages were announced August 30 but Garza has yet to enter his final judgment. The jury found that Lorence had defamed Cornejo-Lopez when he painted a sign on the bed a trailer parked in his property that she had committed tax fraud and conspired to defraud the City of Brownsville, Cameron County and the Brownsville Independent School District out of property taxes.
They awarded her $450 for injury to character and $800 for mental anguish on the allegation of having committed tax fraud and another $450 and $650 on the charge she conspired to defraud the taxing entities. They award her another $20,000 in exemplary damages.
Cornejo-Lopez filed her lawsuit against Lorence on June 15, 2016. Lorence had filed a counter petition which was thrown out August 20, 2018. Both Cornejo-Lopez and the defendant represented themselves in the lawsuit.
On Sept. 28, 2018, Lorence notified the court he was appealing the jury verdict and award.
And as the case wends its way through the lengthy appeals process, some local real-estate professionals and court observers say that although Lorence was mistaken in alleging that Cornejo-Lopez committed fraud and conspired to defraud the taxing entities, they point out that the historical exemptions she was granted by the various taxing entities on the structures of her home at 235 Sunset Drive in Brownsville posed were, to say the least, highly questionable.
Additionally, CCAD records indicate that not all the structures on the property date back to 1947, like the main house facing Sunset Drive. In fact, only five of the structures listed date back to that year while nine others were built after 2010. (See graphic below.)
As can be seen, the buildings added after 2010 include a swimming pool, a two-story apartment structure, a storage area, an attached addition, etc. Those post-2010 additions can clearly be seen in the Google photo at the top of the page.
The Texas property Tax Code allows for tax exemptions for a historical or archaeological site if it has been designated a historic building and the taxing unit votes to grant an exemption. The site must be designated as a Recorded Historical Landmark by the Texas Historical Commission. But the taxing unit decides the amount of the exemption.
Locally, the representative of the Texas Historical Commission in Brownsville is Gene Fernandez, but the exemption and the amount of that exemption is left up to the taxing entities such as the City of Brownsville, Cameron County, the Brownsville Independent School District Texas, Southmost College, the Brownsville Navigation District, etc. The chief appraiser may accept the application as it is submitted, or modify it.However, the Property Tax Code also allows for a challenge by a taxing unit at Section 41.03 before the appraisal review board a grant in whole or in part of a partial exemption. Remember, the taxes not paid by an exempted property must be made up by others not so designated.Will any of the taxing entities challenge what appears to be a wholesale historical exemption on a property whose components are obviously not historic in nature? If so, will they – unlike the hapless Lorence that a jury found had defamed Cornejo-Lopez with his sign – be successful in reducing the exemption?