JACKSON — The bill is coming due.
Just days before Jackson Township voters head to the polls to elect a mayor and two members of the Township Council, taxpayers have officially been ordered to pay $62,823.32 in attorney's fees to the property owner who successfully fought the Township's controversial land-swap condemnation all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The payments come after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled this summer that Jackson Township had no legal authority to condemn the two privately owned properties merely to use them as “currency” in a land swap with another private developer.
Now, rather than fight the property owners' applications for reimbursement of their legal fees, Jackson Township has consented to pay them.
The two Consent Orders were entered by Ocean County Superior Court Judge Francis Hodgson on Thursday, October 22.
Total cost to Jackson Township: $62,823.32.
And that may not necessarily be the end of the legal bill.
The orders resolve the property owners' statutory counsel-fee claims only through July 29, 2026, and expressly provide that neither side waives the right to seek fees incurred afterward. Payment is required within 45 days.
The development comes immediately before oral argument had been scheduled on the counsel-fee applications.
Earlier this month, Township attorneys told Judge Hodgson that the parties were working toward resolving the fee motion and requested an adjournment to permit those discussions to continue.
Those negotiations have now produced a settlement.
Judge Hodgson today signed the Consent Orders.
The orders explicitly state that the payments result from the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision and are being made pursuant to the fee-shifting provision of New Jersey's Eminent Domain Act.
In other words, after years of litigation over Jackson's attempted condemnation, the Township isn't fighting over whether the successful property owner should recover these fees anymore.
It has agreed to pay them.
The approximately $63,000 settlement resolves only one piece of this extraordinary legal saga.
The far bigger issue remains unresolved:
Who owns the land now?
Following their Supreme Court victory, the original property owner asked Judge Hodgson to dismiss Jackson Township's condemnation complaints and revest title to the condemned properties back in them.
That request remains pending.
Oral argument on the title issue is presently scheduled for November 20, 2026.
And that creates a rather striking situation.
Jackson Township has now consented to pay the property owners' attorney's fees arising from the failed condemnation — but has apparently not consented to return title to the properties that the Supreme Court held it lacked authority to condemn in the first place.
Instead, the Township is leaving that issue for Judge Hodgson to decide.
The fee settlements therefore should not be confused with a settlement of the underlying property dispute. They are not.
Judge Hodgson must still determine what relief follows from the Supreme Court's ruling and whether title must be restored to the original property owner.
Meanwhile, an entirely separate lawsuit filed by the property owner against the Jackson Township Planning Board and Bellevue Estates, LLC also remains pending.
As FAA News previously reported, that lawsuit revealed another remarkable chapter in the controversy.
While the condemnation battle was still proceeding through the appellate courts, Bellevue Estates — the private developer that received the properties through Jackson's land swap — pursued Planning Board approval for a massive residential development encompassing the disputed properties.
The Planning Board ultimately approved a development including 118 single-family homes, a 12-unit affordable-housing building, a clubhouse and related improvements.
Most remarkably, the Planning Board formally memorialized that approval on July 20, 2026 — the very same day the New Jersey Supreme Court released its unanimous opinion striking down Jackson's condemnation and holding the land-swap agreement unenforceable as to the disputed properties.
The original owner has now sued to overturn that Planning Board approval, arguing that Bellevue Estates could not establish the enforceable proprietary interest necessary to obtain development approval for property acquired through a condemnation the courts determined was unlawful.
That prerogative-writ lawsuit remains pending, with no substantive ruling yet.
All of this is unfolding at a particularly notable moment for Jackson Township.
Election Day is next week.
Jackson voters will be choosing a mayor and two members of the Township Council.
And whatever voters think about the politics surrounding the original land deal, the legal result is no longer theoretical.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has spoken.
The Township lost.
The Court unanimously concluded that Jackson could not condemn private property merely to hand it to another private developer as part of a land swap.
The original owners are still asking the Superior Court to give them their properties back.
A second lawsuit is challenging development approvals subsequently obtained for those same properties.
And now Jackson Township has agreed that taxpayers will pay $62,823.32 toward the successful property owners' legal fees.
Potential additional fees incurred after July 29 remain expressly preserved.
There are still major questions Judge Hodgson must answer.
Will title be revested in the name of the original owners?
What happens to Bellevue Estates, which received the properties from Jackson while the condemnation litigation was still underway?
What happens to the Planning Board approval covering land that the Supreme Court concluded Jackson lacked authority to condemn for the swap?
And how much more will the litigation ultimately cost?
Those answers are still coming.
But one thing is no longer in dispute:
Jackson Township tried to take these properties.
The property owners fought back.
The property owners won unanimously before New Jersey's highest court.
And now Jackson taxpayers are paying more than $62,000 toward the legal fees it took to defeat their own Township.
The remaining question of whether the land itself goes back to its original owners will be argued before Judge Hodgson on November 20.
By then, however, Jackson Township voters will already have cast their ballots.
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