Court Opinion

ID: 9749503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:47:55.617221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:50.362270
License: Public Domain

Parskey, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). Except for its discussion of negligent conduct I have no quarrel with the court’s opinion. In fact, because the complaint alleges intentional rather than negligent conduct, this would furnish a sufficient basis for rejecting a recovery based on a cause of action sounding in negligence. But when the majority categorically states that in order to recover in a negligence action the plaintiff must allege and prove actual damage, it is at that point that we part company because this statement is contrary to Connecticut law.
In Hageman v. Freeburg, 115 Conn. 469, 162 A. 21 (1932), a case involving a negligence action for personal injuries, speaking through Chief Justice Maltbie, we stated (pp. 471-72) “every invasion of a legal right imports damage.” We followed this holding in Urban v. Hartford Gas Co., 139 Conn. 301, 93 A.2d 292 (1952), which also involved a negligence action for personal injuries, with the further observation (pp. 306-307) that “[t]he wrong to Mrs. Urban became actionable when her legal right was invaded by the intentional or negligent violation of duty on the defendant’s part.” In neither case was a showing of aetual damage made an essential requirement of the negligence *274action.1 That this was not an oversight can be gleaned by the comment by Toelle in “The Urban Case,” 27 Conn. B.J. 74, 79 (1953) and the oblique footnote in 2 Harper & James, Torts § 25.1, n.4. Hageman and Urban state the common law of this state. Until and unless they are overruled, if stare decisis represents anything more than flash paper, they must be followed, the ancient common law and the pronouncements of eminent academicians to the contrary notwithstanding.
An invasion of a person’s legal rights, whether occasioned by trespass or negligence, by intentional or unintentional conduct, should have the same legal consequences. If invasions of one’s rights by assault and battery without actual damages are actionable; Petrucelli v. Catapano, 107 Conn. 122, 123, 139 A. 634 (1927); and if invasions by negligent assault and battery are also actionable; Sansone v. Bechtel, 180 Conn. 96, 99, 429 A.2d 820 (1980); Russo v. Porga, 141 Conn. 706, 708-709, 109 A.2d 585 (1954); Lentine v. McAvoy, 105 Conn. 528, 530-31, 136 A. 76 (1927); then what manner of legal logic excludes invasions by other negligent conduct?
The fact is the different treatment of intentional and negligent acts in the old common law is due neither to logic nor experience but rather to procedural history. Actions of trespass were treated differently from actions of trespass on the case. As Holmes cogently observed in The Common Law (Howe Ed.) (p. 64) “[i]n place of a theory of tort, we have a theory of trespass. And even within *275that narrower limit, precedents of the time of the assize and jurata have been applied without a thought of their connection with a long forgotten procedure.” While legal history should not be sloughed off, neither should it command our slavish obedience. To replace our own soundly reasoned law on the basis of ancient pronouncements founded on arcane common law concepts of forms of action is to replace reason with rote.
With the exceptions noted I respectfully record my concurrence.

 The discussion in the majority opinion (footnote 2) of trivial invasions is very much beside the point. This is not that ease. This case involves a claim of invasion of one’s rights resulting in detention. This is a sufficiently serious invasion to import damage without a further showing of actual damage.