MIDDLETOWN - When a charitable organization tried to buy a farm on Middletown’s affluent Navesink River Road to use as a home for adults with autism, neighbors went to great lengths to block the sale and even tried to bribe the seller to back out of the deal, court papers allege.

When that didn’t work, and the sale went through, neighbors embarked on a pattern of harassment that included debasing the property with menacing graffiti and dumping hundreds of pounds of horse manure on the grounds, the court papers said.

Superior Court Judge Dennis R. O’Brien, sitting in Monmouth County, last year dismissed a lawsuit brought by Oasis Therapeutic Life Centers Inc. against its neighbors, saying the charitable organization failed to set forth a valid claim under the state’s Law Against Discrimination.

But a panel of appellate judges on Monday reinstated the lawsuit, saying the overarching goal of the Law Against Discrimination “is nothing less than the eradication of the cancer of discrimination."

Judges Clarkson S. Fisher, Richard J. Geiger and Lisa A. Firko of the Appellate Division of Superior Court said in their unanimous ruling that Oasis, while not itself in a class protected by the Law Against Discrimination, is nonetheless entitled to seek damages because it provides benefits to people who are protected by the law.

The ruling is a published opinion, meaning it sets a precedent to be followed in future cases.

The Law Against Discrimination makes it illegal “to discriminate against any buyer or renter because of the disability of a person residing in or intending to reside in a dwelling after it is sold, rented or made available because of any person associated with the buyer or renter," the judges wrote.

“That provision clearly does not mean that a seller or landlord must possess the discriminatory intent or that a buyer or renter is the person directly discriminated against," the opinion said. “This provision’s plain meaning supports what is alleged to have occurred here — that defendants targeted and tormented Oasis because Oasis was providing a residence for autistic individuals. (The Law Against Discrimination) renders that conduct unlawful, and the judge erred in dismissing the action for this reason alone."

Attorney Ronald S. Gasiorowski of the Red Bank law firm Gasiorowski & Holobinko filed the suit in Superior Court in Monmouth County in March 2017. O’Brien dismissed the suit in August 2017

Gasiorowoski, who has been an attorney for a half century, said the appellate judges' opinion reinstating the suit “was the most gratifying I’ve had in all my years in practicing law, because I think it really protects the rights of people who need protection, and it’s just a good decision."

More:Parker Drake, autistic man who inspired law to protect disabled, dies at 22

More:Surprise ending to Parker Drake case

Gasiorowski said he doesn’t know whether the lawsuit will now proceed, or if attorneys representing defendants Peter and Susan Wade, Robert and Loren Phillips and Navesink Investments LLC will ask the state Supreme Court to overturn the appellate decision.

Attorneys representing the defendants did not return calls for comment.

Oasis stands for Ongoing Autistic Success in Society. Joan Mai Cleary, a nurse and mother of an autistic child, founded the nonprofit charitable organization with her husband, John Cleary, to create residential learning centers to smooth the transition from childhood to young adulthood for people with autism, according to court papers.

The centers are intended to provide an experience similar to college, providing the young adults with independent living skills and the chance to work on a farm.

“The Clearys believed the peaceful and natural setting of a farm would provide a rewarding and therapeutic working and living environment for challenged individuals,’’ the appellate judges said in their opinion.

More: Oasis farm offers safe place for autistic adults

More:Autism-friendly: What it means, how it works

More:Autistic teen says Freehold kidnapping suspect raped her: 'He sounded mean'

Oasis opened its first transitional living center on a 26-acre estate off Sleepy Hollow Road in Middletown. In 2015, the organization was looking for a second location to give those who had graduated from the program at the first site a permanent place to live and work, according to court papers. That’s when it found a large tract on Navesink River Road — the same stretch where luminaries such as Gov. Phil Murphy and rocker Jon Bon Jovi reside.

Oasis offered to purchase the property for $2.2 million, with assistance from a $600,000 grant the Monmouth Conservation Foundation had promised the organization, the court papers said. Final approval of the grant, however, was derailed after a board member of the foundation who lived near the property expressed concern about a possible link between autism and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut, court papers said.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, had once been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. There has been controversy ever since over whether he was properly diagnosed, or if signs of schizophrenia were missed.

After that, Peter and Susan Wade, neighbors of the property in question, went door-to-door, collecting signatures on a petition objecting to the grant, which provoked the foundation to deny it, the court papers said.

"Defendants and other neighbors also cobbled together a sham offer to induce the property owner to back out of his commitment to sell to Oasis," the papers said. The defendants pulled their offer after Oasis decided to look for property elsewhere, the judges said in their opinion.

But, according to the appellate judges, after the deal with Oasis was resurrected in May or June 2015, anonymous individuals wrote to the property owner, asking him, “Why would you do this to us?" and “How can you live with yourself?" The unidentified property owners asked to be given the opportunity to buy the site.

Days later, Peter Wade called Mai Cleary and offered to donate $250,000 to Oasis in exchange for an assignment of Oaisis’ contract rights, the judges said.

“Oasis rejected this ‘donation/bribe,’" they said.

Wade also offered to pay the seller $250,000 to break his contract with Oasis, which the seller rebuffed, according to the appellate ruling.

Oasis' lawsuit alleged that Robert and Loren Philips and Navesink Investments LLC participated in a conspiracy with the Wades to prevent Oasis from acquiring the property.

Despite that, Oasis closed on the purchase on July 2, 2015, but Oasis alleged in its lawsuit that the defendants' discriminatory conduct did not stop there.

In November 2015, residents of Oasis awoke to find “enormous, garish and frightening graffiti" covering 600 to 700 square feet in the driveway. The graffiti included depictions of snakes and fire, the judges said. Wade admitted, “We did that," the judges wrote in their opinion.

The following month, defendant allowed a “very aggressive goat" to trespass on Oasis’ property and head-butt Mai Cleary, the judges wrote.

“They also allowed a horse to graze on Oasis’ property, leaving piles of manure," the appellate opinion said. “Indeed, the complaint alleged defendants dumped ‘literally hundreds of pounds’ of horse manure on Oasis’s property."

Oasis alleged that the defendants constructed a fence that has no gate, blocking Oasis’ access to a shared driveway that provides the only access to the Oasis property that is wide and flat enough for emergency vehicles to enter, according to the court papers.

“Oasis also alleged that in April 2016, a neighborhood attorney attempted to convince the tax assessor that Oasis should be paying property taxes, falsely claiming autistic children do not live on the property," the judges’ opinion said.

Oasis’ lawsuit is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and attorney fees, as well as removal of the fence and an order requiring the defendants to refrain from any further, harassing graffiti.

Kathleen Hopkins: 732-643-4202; Khopkins@app.com