Cramer & Anderson Partner John D. Tower has won a Distinguished Leader award from the Connecticut Law Tribune (CLT), as part of its annual statewide Professional Excellence Awards.
The CLT announced this year’s Distinguished Leaders Aug. 25. Professional Excellence Awards winners were nominated by their peers and selected by a panel. They will be honored at the annual Connecticut Legal Awards Dinner Oct. 3 at the Bond Room in Hartford.
In announcing Attorney Tower as a Distinguished Leader, the CLT said, “Tower went to bat for a mother in Brookfield who hired a Danbury contractor for $38,725 and ended up with incomplete repairs, a $116,000 bill and workers who had walked away from the job.”
In nominating Attorney Tower for the award, Cramer & Anderson Senior Partner Ken Taylor wrote, in part:
“Carol Degen, a middle-aged single mother of two adult children, decided in 2007 to renovate the kitchen and small bathroom of the family’s house in Brookfield. She hired a Danbury contractor for a $38,725 project and the family went to a motel.
“The contractor immediately began citing unexpected issues—and $116,423.96 later, including a new mortgage on a house the family had owned outright, he walked away. The house was gutted. Only two-by-fours extending from the basement to the roof kept it standing.”
The Degen family connected with the Holland Family Foundation, which provided a nice, below-market-rate apartment in New Milford, along with the services of Attorney Tower, who filed suit.
Fast-forward to 2016, when Attorney Tower won a judgment for the family of $471,603.46. It should have been cause for celebration, but the judgment was also a dead-end. When it became clear it was unlikely the judgment would be honored, “Attorney Tower dug deeper for this at-risk family,” Attorney Taylor said.
The result was an I-Team investigation story that opened the 11 p.m. newscast on Halloween in 2016. As Attorney Tower hoped, the power of the TV story led to a groundswell of support, and the coming together of volunteers, professionals and contractors, who are now working to build the Degen family a new house essentially for free.
Attorney Tower is now guiding legal aspects of the rebuild effort on a pro bono basis.
Attorney Tower’s primary focuses are Civil Litigation and Municipal Law. He has served as New Milford’s Town Attorney since December 2015, a role he shares with Partner D. Randall DiBella. Attorney Tower often takes on more complicated cases involving construction, contract, property, business, partnership, trust, and estate disputes.
Attorney Tower may be reached at (860) 355-2631, or by email at jtower@crameranderson.com. The firm also has offices in Danbury, Litchfield, Washington Depot and Kent. For more information, call the New Milford office at (860) 355-2631 or see the website at www.crameranderson.com.