The town of Cromwell must pay $5.2 million in damages to group home operator Gilead Community Services for violating the Fair Housing and Americans with Disabilities acts.

The damages award is one of the largest ever ordered in such a case, according to Gilead’s lawyers at the firm of Relman Colfax: $181,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

“This verdict provides hope to people with disabilities that their rights to live independently in the community of their choice are protected under the law and will be fought for when necessary,” Gilead CEO Dan Osborne said in a statement.

The case originated in 2015 when Gilead bought a single-family home in Cromwell with the intent to convert it into a six-resident group home for people with disabilities. Under state law and the federal Fair Housing and Americans with Disabilities acts, the home is allowed by-right in residential neighborhoods. Instead, town officials battled the group home at the insistence of its neighbors despite knowing that doing so was illegal. Actions included a forum at Town Hall, a press campaign, attempts to cut off Gilead’s state funding, cease-and-desist orders, denials of tax exemption applications and what a statement from Relman Colfax described as “police misconduct.” Gilead was forced to close the group home in August 2015 in the face of local officials’ campaign.

Relman Colfax and the Connecticut Fair Housing Center filed suit against the town in 2017. The jury found the town of Cromwell in violation after a single day of deliberation.