A $1.6 million judgment handed down in January 2026 is currently worth exactly zero dollars to Michael Criscuolo. The 65-year-old Seymour resident won the award after tripping over hidden construction debris outside his apartment, an injury severe enough to force doctors to amputate one of his toes. But the money isn’t coming. Not yet, anyway.
The delay stems from a legal maneuver by the property owner, SL Seymour, LLC, and its managing member, Sim Levenhartz. Levenhartz never showed up for the original personal injury lawsuit filed in May 2025. When Judge H. Gordon Hall issued the default judgment, Levenhartz’s lawyer, Kenneth Rozich, later argued the lawsuit papers weren’t properly served. Judge Hall rejected that claim, ruling the service was valid under Connecticut law. Levenhartz then appealed the decision, effectively freezing the payout while the case climbs through the state’s higher courts.
This isn’t just a dispute over a slip-and-fall. It looks like a pattern. Local records show the nine-unit building on Argonne Terrace is now empty, windows boarded up, and sitting on roughly $40,000 in unpaid blight fines and $15,600 in property taxes. Worse, building inspectors issued a stop-work order in 2025 after discovering the engineering certificates for the renovation work were fake. An August report from the New Haven Independent adds that Levenhartz faces an active arrest warrant in New Haven over alleged code violations and owes another $259,000 in municipal liens for other properties.
Criscuolo’s attorney, Sean Stokes of Riscassi & Davis, P.C., told the Valley Independent Sentinel that the landlord’s silence is standard avoidance behavior. "What happened to Mr Criscuolo happens all the time," Stokes said. "The difference is most of the time we have landlords... who are responsible... or show up in court when a case is filed. None of that happened here." Stokes noted that the City of New Haven is having a "horrible time" collecting debts from Levenhartz, suggesting this case is just one drop in a larger bucket of unpaid liabilities.
For now, Criscuolo is left holding a court order that promises $1.6 million but delivers nothing. The next step is the appellate court’s review of Judge Hall’s ruling on service of process. Until that decision lands, the check remains stuck in the system, and the empty, blighted building on Argonne Terrace serves as a physical reminder of the debt.