Court Opinion

ID: 9716410
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:38:16.383361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:45.356673
License: Public Domain

O’Sullivan, J.
(dissenting in part). I disagree with the opinion only in one respect. The rescript, it seems to me, should order the correction of the judgment file.
The action was instituted to obtain an injunction restraining the defendant from interfering with the plaintiffs’ use of a claimed right of way, described in their complaint. The answer consisted of a general denial. The judgment file recites that the court found the issues for the defendant. Instead of then completing the file by an adjudication that the defendant recover of the plaintiffs her taxable costs, the file proceeds to set forth in elaborate style the measurements and bounds of a right of way other than the one described in the complaint.
The incorporation into the judgment file of this description, which was sought by neither the plaintiffs nor the defendant, is, I believe, highly improper. To retain it is to ignore the niceties of good practice and, worse still, may lead to a claim of res judicata by the defendant. The action, brought, as it was, in equity, should not be transformed by an incorrect file into an action to settle title or to fix lost boundaries. A different situation would have prevailed had the court found for the plaintiffs and issued a restraining order. If that had occurred, the court should have described with exactitude the right of way with whose enjoyment by the plaintiffs the defendant was enjoined from interfering. Birdsey v. Kosienski, 140 Conn. 403, 412, 101 A.2d 274.
In this opinion Inglis, C. J., concurred.