Opinion ID: 2380298
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: simultaneous penalties of incarceration and fine

Text: The defendants contend that the court lacked the authority to impose, and abused its discretion by imposing, simultaneous coercive penalties of incarceration and fine. These claims are reviewable in an appeal from the contempt judgment, because the contemnor must have some remedy for unauthorized or excessive penalties. The court's authority to impose civil contempt penalties arises not from statutory provisions but from the common law. Potter v. Board of Selectmen, supra, 197; Welch v. Barber, 52 Conn. 147, 156 (1884); Huntington v. McMahon, 48 Conn. 174, 196 (1880). The penalties which may be imposed, therefore, arise from the inherent power of the court to coerce compliance with its orders. In Connecticut, the court has the authority in civil contempt to impose on the contemnor either incarceration or a fine or both. Rogers Manufacturing Co. v. Rogers, 38 Conn. 121, 123-24 (1871); see Board of Education v. Shelton Education Assn., supra. The evaluation of civil contempt penalties depends to a great extent on whether the penalties are considered at the time they are first conditionally imposed for the purpose of coercing compliance or are considered after the contempt has been purged and the penalties are finalized. When the penalties are first imposed, the propriety of the court's exercise of its discretion turns on the reasonableness of the amount of the coercion that the court deems necessary, keeping in mind the court's ultimate power to reduce the penalties once the contempt has been purged. We cannot say in this case that the fact that the court simultaneously imposed two forms of conditional penalty to coerce compliance amounted to an abuse of discretion. It may be a better practice, as the defendants suggest, for the court to impose civil contempt penalties in increasingly harsh stages so as to increase the pressure on the contemnor. See Matter of Grand Jury Impaneled Jan. 21, 1975, 529 F.2d 543, 551 (3d Cir. 1976). Although our opinion might differ from that of the trial court we cannot say that the initial conditional penalties imposed by the court in this case were so harsh that they amounted to an abuse of discretion.