Letting Mason Station challenge Wiscasset’s pursuit of back taxes now would encourage foot-dragging in other civil cases, the town argues in a new legal go-round with the company.

The town makes its case in response to an appeal Mason Station filed with Maine Supreme Judicial Court in November 2014.

The company maintains the town is double-dipping, by seeking the taxes in court even though it owns dozens of former Mason Station properties.

The company contends that the tax-acquired properties satisfy the $846,263 that went unpaid.

“The town has been made more than whole by its ... foreclosure,” Mason Station attorney Brian Willing writes.

The appeal asks Maine’s highest court to vacate an August 2014 decision in Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset. The lower court denied Mason Station’s request for relief from a 2013 judgment in the town’s favor.

The 2013 judgment came after Mason Station filed no response to Wiscasset’s lawsuit over the back taxes.

In a January brief that responds to the company’s appeal, town attorneys Bryan Dench and Benjamin Smith argue that last summer’s Superior Court decision should stand.

The brief claims that Maine law lets towns use more than one means to recover taxes; and that Mason Station could have challenged Wiscasset in court long before the company did.

“(Mason Station’s) obligation to challenge the town’s litigation for unpaid taxes was triggered when it was served with the town’s complaint over a year and a half before Mason Station took any action whatever to assert its interests,” Dench and Smith write.

“Granting the relief sought by Mason Station would encourage dilatory conduct by all parties to proceedings and would erode ... longstanding policy,” the brief continues. “Mason Station failed to demonstrate ... that it took appropriate actions ... to safeguard its interest when it was served with the town’s complaint.”

Wiscasset’s brief further claims that the company has not shown that the tax-acquired properties would cover the debt.

“Mason Station makes (that) assertion despite the absence of any proof,” the town’s lawyers argue.

In a telephone interview Monday, Willing said Mason Station sought relief from the default judgment after the town began efforts to enforce it in Connecticut, where Mason Station’s principals are based. Until then, Mason Station believed the town’s ownership of the properties meant it would not keep seeking to collect on the taxes, Willing said.

Dench did not immediately return a message left Friday. Smith on Monday took questions and planned to get back to the Wiscasset Newspaper with responses.

Willing has received word from Maine Supreme Judicial Court that it will hear oral arguments in Mason Station’s appeal in early April.