Justice Michael Duddy has ruled in favor of Nordic Aquafarms Inc. in litigation brought by Belfast property owners Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace, who sought reimbursement for their expenses to clear the title to their land after the company claimed an ownership interest as part of its aborted plan for a salmon farm.
The order was issued Jan. 2 following a bench trial last October in the Business and Consumer Court in Portland. Duddy ruled that “Nordic did not act with malice or reckless disregard when asserting rights in the intertidal flats, and thus did not slander the title of the property.” The judge rejected Mabee and Grace’s motion for monetary damages, saying the plaintiffs “have not proven damages.” Evidence of malice or reckless disregard and proof of resulting financial damages are required under Maine law to prove a property title has been “slandered.”
The plaintiffs sought reimbursement of the $888,375.32 they spent to clear the title to their property after Nordic clouded the title in its efforts to secure environmental permits for water intake from and effluent outflow to Penobscot Bay. Title defects typically devalue a property, so the couple took their house off the market. Duddy took issue with their damages claim in part because they had not actually lost a sale. Expenses related to their efforts to clear their title were delineated in 650 pages of time sheets, receipts and other documentation that the plaintiffs filed with their motion to attach the proceeds from Nordic’s sale of its Belfast property to Upstream Watch, which closed Nov. 3, 2025.
Lincolnville attorney Kim Ervin Tucker, who represents Mabee, Grace and the Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area, said she expects to file their response to Duddy’s ruling in a matter of days, seeking his reconsideration of pertinent facts in her original filing.
Mabee and Grace had just put their home on the market when Nordic came to town in 2018, proposing to build a $500 million land-based salmon farm on the upland side of U.S. Route 1. Although they initially favored the idea of an aquaculture business in Belfast, the couple subsequently discovered that Nordic was laying claim to the intertidal area they owned along the shore in front of their home and three adjacent properties. An easement on one of those upland properties gave the Norwegian company access for industrial use of the land, which was to include its pipes to Penobscot Bay.
In an earlier quiet title lawsuit against Nordic that went to the state’s highest court on appeal, the Law Court reversed a lower court ruling and found that Mabee and Grace owned the intertidal land in question. It also ruled that the adjacent upland lot was restricted by deed to residential use and that the Friends held a valid and enforceable conservation easement on the intertidal land.
In his Jan. 2 ruling, Judge Duddy said Nordic is not responsible for clearing the clouds on Mabee and Grace’s title based on the Law Court’s quiet title ruling in their favor. The clouds still exist in part because of release deeds Nordic recorded in the land records in its efforts to prove it had an ownership interest in the intertidal land. Duddy said the release deeds represented Nordic’s good faith effort to establish its ownership interest. In other related cases, the Waldo County Superior Court determined those release deeds were invalid.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.
