Court Opinion

ID: 9747686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:27:45.461198+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:25.631797
License: Public Domain

Cotter, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree that the case was properly before the jury. Section 52-215 of the General Statutes expressly provides that in order for a party to obtain a jury trial, he must claim his ease for the jury docket within 10 days after an issue of fact is joined. Thereafter, a case may be placed on the jury docket only by consent of the parties or by order of the court.
Neither condition was met in the instant case. The plaintiffs claimed the case for the jury list more than 27 months after the close of the pleadings, the court at no time ordered the case placed on the jury docket, and thus the clerk acted without statutory authority when, on his own initiative, he improperly entered the case on the jury docket.
The facts are clear and uncontroverted that the plaintiffs did not comply with the statutory time frame. Thereafter, the ruling on the motion to strike presented a question of fact for the trial court. Krupa v. Farmington River Power Co., 147 Conn. 153, 156, 157 A.2d 914. We have no facts in the record to explain or excuse the delay of the plaintiffs, who were derelict in failing to comply with the statute, and thus there are no facts in the record to support or test the action of the trial court in denying the motion. Under the circumstances, whether the court acted in the exercise of its discretion is impossible to determine, and the reasons for the plaintiffs’ dereliction must remain a mystery.
*11Statutes such as General Statutes § 52-215 “are intended to be so framed that a party who does not comply with the rules may justly be held to have voluntarily relinquished his right to a jury trial.” Noren v. Wood, 72 Conn. 96, 98, 43 A. 649; cf. Nowey v. Kravits, 133 Conn. 394, 396, 51 A.2d 495; Leahey v. Heasley, 127 Conn. 332, 16 A.2d 609. The reason for this rule is that while the right of a party to claim a jury trial is secured by the Connecticut constitution, article first, section 19, the right to prefer a trial to the court is “equally secured, under certain circumstances,” by § 52-215, “under which a waiver of a jury may be implied, and when implied is irrevocable, although it may be in effect vacated by order of the court.” Fuller v. Johnson, 80 Conn. 493, 495, 68 A. 977; see also Bristol v. Pitchard, 81 Conn. 451, 453, 71 A. 558.
The majority opinion states that the court’s decision on the motion to strike had the same effect as the granting of a motion to place the case on the docket and that for the court to have required a specific motion by the plaintiffs “would have been inappropriate. The ease was already there.” This reasoning is unpersuasive because it ignores the fact that the clerk entered the case on the docket erroneously and without any authority and because it sanctions the back-door approach employed by the plaintiffs, which is contrary to the structure and clear intention of the statute. Section 52-215 imposes the burden of claiming a jury trial on the party who desires one, and a litigant who has completely flouted the statute is not entitled to claim this right with the same facility as one who has complied with the rules. Thus, the plaintiffs should have first filed a motion to place the case on the jury docket. Simply claiming the case to the jury *12docket, as the majority decides the issue, improperly shifted onto the defendant not only the onus of filing a motion, but also the burden of proof on the issue of whether the case should be on the jury docket. Since the ease had not been properly claimed for that docket, the defendant, after 27 months had elapsed, was eminently justified in believing that his case would be tried to the court.
Even in these iconoclastic days, orderly administration of justice is impossible without minimal adherence to statutory mandates, Malone v. Steinberg, 138 Conn. 718, 721, 89 A.2d 213, which require “that reasonable notice be given of the intention of a party to avail himself of his right, in a civil case, to put his case before a jury. Without such notice the reference of matters to juries might well become so disordered as to make the right unavailable or ineffective as to any litigant.” Muzzy v. Curtis, 127 Vt. 516, 517, 253 A.2d 149.
I would find error, set aside the judgment, and remand the case for a new trial to the court.
In this opinion, House, C. J., concurred.