Court Opinion

ID: 9709001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:37:40.983848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:45.298470
License: Public Domain

House, C. J.
(dissenting.) I do not agree with the majority opinion in this case. The judgment dismissing the action brought by the two plaintiffs, Vincent Snow, P.P.A., and Frederick Snow, was entered February 23, 1976. No appeal was taken from that judgment until April 13, 1977, when both plaintiffs appealed from that judgment. The record discloses that on March 29,1976, a “Motion to Open Dismissal” was filed by “the plaintiff” without identifying which plaintiff. Although the majority opinion correctly states that “[tjhe record presented contains no evidence that this motion was either abandoned, withdrawn or stricken,” what happened is no mystery. Section 218 of the Practice Book expressly provides that matters on the short calendar (which includes such matters as the motion of “the plaintiff”) “shall not be continued except for good cause shown; and no matter in which adverse parties are interested shall be continued unless the parties shall agree thereto before the day of the short calendar session and notify the clerk, who shall make note thereof on the list of the presiding judge.” Not only is there no indication that the short calendar motion was continued but the court’s memorandum of decision notes that the motion “was never pursued” and the file in the case indicates exactly what happened. “There is no question . . . concerning our power to take judicial notice of files of the Superior Court, whether the file is from the case at bar or otherwise. State v. Lenihan, 151 *576Conn. 552, 554, 200 A.2d 476; Politzer v. Jeffrey, Inc., 133 Conn. 605, 606, 53 A.2d 201; Preferred Accident Ins. Co. v. Musante, Berman & Steinberg Co., 133 Conn. 536, 540, 52 A.2d 862; McCleave v. John J. Flanagan Co., 115 Conn. 36, 39, 160 A. 305; Maltbie, Conn. App. Proc. §§ 312, 313.” Karp v. Urban Redevelopment Commission, 162 Conn. 525, 527, 294 A.2d 633. The file discloses that the motion was on the court’s short calendar for April 9, 1976, no one appeared in support of it and it was stricken.
Thereafter, on April 20, 1976, after the session of court at which the judgment of dismissal had been rendered, a new “Motion to Open Dismissal” was filed by “the plaintiff,” again not otherwise identified. It was heard by the court, treated as a motion to restore the case to the doeket and denied by the court on January 31, 1977. The court, thereafter, granted to “the plaintiff” two extensions of time “in which to file an appeal from the Court’s decision denying the reopening of this matter,” and, on April 13, 1977, both plaintiffs, Vincent Snow and Frederick Snow, filed the present appeal, not from the denial of the “reopening of this matter” but “from the Superior Court’s decision striking the case,” which was the judgment which had been rendered February 23, 1976. Notwithstanding the fact that the appeal was taken “from the Superior Court’s decision striking the ease,” the sole assignment of error filed by “the plaintiffs” was “the Court’s refusal to open the dismissal and restore the case to the docket on the ground that the Court lacked jurisdiction.”
The majority opinion properly notes that “[i]n the absence of waiver or consent of the parties, a court is without jurisdiction to modify or correct *577a judgment in other than clerical respects after the expiration of the term of the court in which it was rendered,” citing Lake Garda Co. v. Lake Garda Improvement Assn., 156 Conn. 61, 65, 238 A.2d 393, and Foley v. Douglas & Bro., Inc., 121 Conn. 377, 379, 185 A. 70. To these authorities the cases of Jenkins v. Ellis, 169 Conn. 154, 160, 362 A.2d 831, and Fidelity Trust Co. v. Lamb, 164 Conn. 126, 134, 318 A.2d 109, may be added. The majority opinion also properly notes that since the motion which the court decided — the motion to open dismissal filed April 20, 1976, — was not filed within the same court session in which the judgment dismissing the action was rendered, it did not “by itself, operate to preserve the trial court’s jurisdiction and thus allow the court to restore the case to the docket in a subsequent court session.”
I fully agree with the majority opinion’s enunciation of these two well established legal principles. I cannot, however, agree with its conclusion that because an unidentified one of the two plaintiffs during the session at which the judgment dismissing the action was rendered did file a “Motion to Open Dismissal” the filing of that motion preserved indefinitely the court’s jurisdiction of the action and over the parties even after that motion, not having been pressed, was stricken. I know of no authority which supports such an anomaly.
The brief in support of the present appeal has been submitted not by the plaintiffs-appellants but by “the plaintiff-appellant,” the identity of which plaintiff remaining undisclosed. Since it does not brief or contain any argument concerning the judgment from which the two plaintiffs appealed — “the Superior Court’s decision striking the case” — I *578would treat any suggestion of error with respect to the judgment appealed from as abandoned. State v. Crawford, 172 Conn. 65, 66, 372 A.2d 154; State v. Ruiz, 171 Conn. 264, 265, 368 A.2d 222. If, nevertheless, the court were to consider the merits of the appeal as briefed by the unidentified individual plaintiff, I would find no error in the judgment of the trial court and its conclusion that, under the circumstances, it was without jurisdiction to grant the relief sought by the April, 1976, “Motion to Open Dismissal” which was not filed during the same court session in which the judgment dismissing the action was rendered.