Court Opinion

ID: 9645099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:12:44.696657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:23.178191
License: Public Domain

Peters, J.
(dissenting.) I disagree with the conclusion reached by the majority that the defendant in this case is entitled to launch a collateral attack on the judgment ordering him irrevocably to maintain life insurance for the benefit of his children.
We are all agreed about the procedural posture in which this case comes to us. In the dissolution proceedings that led to the judgment of May 3, *4701979, that the defendant now contests, the defendant appeared without reservation, and filed an answer and a cross complaint. At the evidentiary hearing before Judge Higgins, in which the defendant participated, he had the opportunity to present whatever evidence and to raise whatever claims he then deemed appropriate. He could have called to the attention of the court the opinions of this court in Sillman v. Sillman, 168 Conn. 144, 358 A.2d 150 (1975), and Kennedy v. Kennedy, 177 Conn. 47, 411 A.2d 25 (1979), both of which had been released by that time. After the judgment was rendered, the defendant took no appeal, nor did he file a timely motion to open or set aside the judgment within the four month period authorized by General Statutes § 52-212a or Practice Book, 1978, § 326. There can therefore be no doubt that the judgment against the defendant was entitled to the full respect ordinarily afforded to a final judgment.
The defendant’s motion to correct judgment, belatedly filed on September 25,1979, may well have been triggered by the plaintiff’s motion to hold the defendant in contempt for his failure to maintain the life insurance as previously ordered. The plaintiff initially filed her contempt motion on August 30, 1979, and then renewed it on November 8,1979. The decision of the trial court to modify its prior judgment on jurisdictional grounds1 included an order that the contempt motion be marked off the calendar. The plaintiff’s appeal is limited to the trial court’s modification of its judgment and does not directly challenge the court’s disposition of the contempt motion.
*471I agree with the conclusion of the majority that the defendant’s “Motion to Correct” is not specifically authorized by the statutes or by the Practice Book. Whatever authority the trial court had to correct its judgment must be derived from its common-law right to entertain a collateral attack on a judgment that is not merely voidable but void.
Turning to the merits of the appeal, I concede that the trial court’s original order was in error in light of the mandate of General Statutes § 1-ld, as interpreted in Kennedy v. Kennedy, 177 Conn. 47, 51-52, 411 A.2d 25 (1979), and Sillman v. Sillman, 168 Conn. 144, 148, 358 A.2d 150 (1975). The court did lack authority to order insurance to be maintained beyond the minority of the defendant’s children. I am not persuaded that we should invariably characterize as an absence of subject matter jurisdiction every failure of a trial court to observe every statutory limitation on its authority to act; but it is clear that in this instance I am bound by our holding to the contrary in Kennedy v. Kennedy, supra, 52-53.
Even if the trial court’s error is properly deemed to have been jurisdictional in nature, it is my view that the present collateral attack on the trial court’s judgment is not warranted. As we said in Monroe v. Monroe, 177 Conn. 173, 178, 413 A.2d 819, appeal dismissed, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 801, 100 S. Ct. 20, 62 L. Ed. 2d 14 (1979), “[t]he modern law of civil procedure suggests that even litigation about subject matter jurisdiction should take into account the importance of the principle of the finality of judgments, particularly when the parties have had a full opportunity originally to contest the jurisdiction of the adjudicatory tribunal. James & Hazard, Civil Procedure (2d Ed. 1977) § 13.16, esp. 695-97.”
*472It seems to me that this case falls squarely within the rule proposed by Restatement (Second), Judgments § 15. That section provides, in relevant part, “When a court has rendered a judgment in a contested action, the judgment precludes the parties from litigating the question of the court’s subject matter jurisdiction in subsequent litigation except if: (1) The subject matter of the action was so plainly beyond the court’s jurisdiction that its entertaining the action was a manifest abuse of authority . . . .”2 The accompanying comments emphasize that if the original proceedings, in a tribunal of general rather than limited legal capacity, constituted a contested action, relitigation is ordinarily precluded whether or not the question of the tribunal’s jurisdiction was expressly raised in the original action. See Restatement (Second), Judgments § 15, comment a, p. 151 and comment d, p. 157. “[T]he public interest in observance of the particular jurisdictional rule is sufficiently strong to permit [relitigation] . . . only if the tribunal’s excess of authority was plain or has seriously disturbed the distribution of governmental powers or has infringed a fundamental constitutional protection.” Restatement (Second), Judgments § 15, comment d, p. 158.
1 fail to understand how the majority can find support in the provisions of this rule for its con-*473elusion that collateral attack is appropriate. The rule applies to cases which were contested, but excludes default judgments; the defendant herein did participate in a contested action in a court of general capacity. The rule is not limited to cases in which the jurisdictional question was expressly litigated in the original action. What appears to divide us is the majority’s conclusion that the trial court’s original action was plainly beyond its jurisdiction.
As I read the language of Restatement (Second), Judgments § 15, there is a significant distinction between the conclusion that the tribunal lacked subject matter jurisdiction and the conclusion that its action was “so plainly beyond the court’s jurisdiction . . . [as to amount to] a manifest abuse of authority.” If every error of subject matter jurisdiction were to be deemed to be plainly beyond the court’s jurisdiction, § 15 would be meaningless, for the exception would swallow up the rule. I would emphasize the truly exceptional nature of the “plainly beyond” cases.
On the record before us, I see no reason to characterize the trial court’s error in its original order as plainly beyond its jurisdiction. The trial court had full authority to adjudicate all claims relating to alimony, to marital property and to support. It had the authority to make other orders, although concededly not this one, about the insurance in question. The court clearly could have required the defendant to maintain life insurance for the benefit of the plaintiff as security for an order of alimony. The court obviously could have required the defendant to maintain life insurance as security for orders of support during his children’s minority. A court *474which has authority to make valid orders about a res which is properly before it does not, it seems to me, act plainly beyond its jurisdiction just because it makes an improper order with respect to that res.
I understand that this court is not bound by rules proposed by the American Law Institute. I recognize that our case law contains many statements in support of the conclusion of the majority that a court has inherent power to open and to modify any judgment rendered without jurisdiction in any respect. I am impressed, however, by the source of that power, by its derivation from the common law and not from statutory fiat. It seems to me entirely consistent with the common-law tradition to accommodate our law to considerations previously thought to be of lesser importance. I believe that a collateral attack on a judgment arising out of a contested action should only be entertained in order to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice. Cf. Zingus v. Redevelopment Agency, 161 Conn. 276, 282, 287 A.2d 366 (1971). At a time when dockets are crowded and courts are working to full capacity, it does not strike me as a miscarriage of justice to deny a father’s belated complaint that he should not be required to maintain life insurance for the benefit of his children.
I would find error and order reinstatement of the original judgment of May 3, 1979.

 The motion to correct judgment did not ask, nor did the court purport to find, a substantial change in the circumstances of either party. Cf. General Statutes § 46b-86 (a).

 The remainder of Restatement (Second), Judgments § 15 contains two other provisions allowing relitigation if “(2) Allowing the judgment to stand would substantially infringe the authority of another tribunal or agency of government; or (3) The judgment was rendered by a court lacking capability to make an adequately informed determination of a question concerning its own jurisdiction and as a matter of procedural fairness the party seeking to avoid the judgment should have opportunity belatedly to attack the court’s subject matter jurisdiction.” Neither of these two caveats is applicable here.