Background
Convention Headquarters Hotels LLC challenged the March 1, 2010 assessment of its Indianapolis property in a case filed in 2019. Its petition asserted federal and state constitutional claims and a separate count attacking the property’s market value-in-use—Indiana’s property-tax measure of the value a property has for its current use. At the hotel’s request, the Tax Court bifurcated the case. The parties first litigated the constitutional claims, while the valuation claim and the Marion County Assessor’s counterclaim remained stayed.
In 2024, after discovery and a four-day trial, the court rejected the constitutional claims because the hotel had not proved that the assessor treated its property differently from other commercial properties under construction. The Indiana Supreme Court denied review in 2025. When the valuation phase resumed, the parties disagreed over whether comparative uniformity and equalization theories remained. A June 2026 order held the hotel judicially estopped from expanding the stayed valuation phase beyond market value-in-use.
The hotel then moved under Indiana Trial Rule 15 to amend its petition. It sought to broaden the existing valuation count, add two counts alleging nonuniform and unequal assessment, and revise background allegations. The assessor accepted a valuation amendment limited to the property’s land and improvements but opposed the equalization theories. By then the litigation was seven years old and concerned an assessment sixteen years in the past.
The Court’s Holding
The Tax Court granted the motion only in part. Judge McAdam explained that Trial Rule 15 favors freely allowing amendments, but a court may deny leave for undue delay and undue prejudice. Time alone is not decisive. The important question is whether new evidence or changed circumstances reasonably required the pleading change. A litigant seeking an amendment after years of delay must offer an explanation.
The hotel offered none that justified adding the equalization counts. Indiana Trial Rule 8(E)(2) permitted it to plead inconsistent or alternative theories from the start. The possibility that zero-dollar valuations of other properties qualified as assessments was known and had been discussed in the litigation years earlier. The hotel’s original theory could therefore have been paired with the alternative contention that, if those properties were assessed, their lower assessment ratios required equalization. An unfavorable resolution of the first theory did not create a newly available claim.
The delay also prejudiced the assessor in a way more preparation time could not cure. Equalization litigation would require reconstructing the values, construction status, costs, and information available for numerous third-party properties as of 2010. Witnesses and records had become harder to locate, and third parties had no duty to preserve evidence. Allowing the claims after the taxpayer had obtained bifurcation by promising that the second phase involved only its property’s value would also promote serial litigation.
The court did allow Count VI to cover both land and improvements because that change aligned the taxpayer’s claim with the assessor’s existing counterclaim. But Count VI must remain confined to market value-in-use and cannot use comparable assessments to introduce an equalization theory indirectly. Background amendments were permitted only insofar as they related to live claims and did not alter the final judgment on Counts I through V.
Key Takeaways
- A party seeking to amend an Indiana tax appeal after a lengthy delay should identify a concrete change in facts or circumstances that made the amendment necessary.
- Trial Rule 8 permits alternative and inconsistent theories, so losing on one factual premise generally does not justify adding a previously available alternative years later.
- Prejudice is especially weighty when delay has eroded historical evidence concerning third-party properties and cannot be cured through a longer schedule.
- A party’s representations used to secure bifurcation can shape whether a later attempt to enlarge the reserved phase is considered unfair or piecemeal.
Why It Matters
The order is a significant procedural guide for practitioners in the Indiana Tax Court’s unique statewide appellate jurisdiction over tax cases. Property-tax litigation often depends on historical valuations and records outside the parties’ direct control. Counsel should plead alternative valuation, uniformity, and equalization theories early when the known facts could support them, even if the theories rest on competing characterizations of an assessment.
The decision also shows that Indiana’s liberal amendment rule has practical limits. A timely motion under a scheduling order is not necessarily a timely theory under Trial Rule 15. When a party has shaped the litigation through bifurcation and years have diminished the opposing party’s evidence, the court may preserve a narrow live valuation dispute while refusing to reopen theories that could have been pleaded at the outset.