Epstein

The plaintiff, S, sought to recover damages from the defendant attorney for alleged statutory (§ 52-564) theft in connection with the defendant's conduct during prior judicial proceedings involving the foreclosure of a municipal lien filed against S's real property. The defendant, acting as B Co.'s attorney, commenced the prior action to foreclose the lien, which B Co. had purchased from a municipality. During the foreclosure action, S was defaulted for failure to appear, and the court thereafter rendered a judgment of strict foreclosure. After the running of the law days, and approximately six months after title vested in B Co., the defendant filed a certificate of foreclosure in the municipal land records. B Co. subsequently sold the property to a third party. S alleged in the present action that the defendant, with the intent to deprive S of his property or to appropriate the property to B Co., had perpetrated a fraud on the trial court during the foreclosure proceedings by knowingly making materially false representations about the state marshal's inabil- ity to serve process on S and about the value of S's property, which purportedly led the court to render the foreclosure judgment. The trial court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the present action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, concluding that, because all of the defendant's alleged conduct occurred during the foreclosure proceed- ings, S's statutory theft claim was barred by the litigation privilege, which affords attorneys absolute immunity from liability for certain statements made or conduct during judicial proceedings. The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's judgment, concluding that all of the defendant's allegedly wrongful conduct occurred within the underlying foreclosure proceedings and that the balancing of policy considerations weighed in favor of applying absolute immunity to S's claim of statutory theft. On the granting of certification, S appealed. Held: 1. The Appellat

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant, an attorney, for alleged statutory theft arising from the defendant's conduct during prior judicial proceedings involving the foreclosure of the plaintiff's property. The defendant, acting as attorney for B Co., brought an action against the plaintiff to foreclose a municipal lien that B Co. had pur- chased from the city of Bridgeport. The plaintiff thereafter commenced this action alleging that the defendant, in the course of the foreclosure proceeding, made false representations to the court with the intent to default the plaintiff for failure to appear and to render a judgment of strict foreclosure. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant intended to deprive the plaintiff of his property and/or to appropriate the property to B Co., committing theft pursuant to statute (§ 52-564). The court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the ground that the defendant was protected by absolute immunity pursuant to the litigation privilege, and, from the judgment rendered thereon, the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court properly granted the defendant's motion to dismiss, this court having determined, as a matter of first impression, that the defen- dant was protected by absolute immunity from the plaintiff's action for statutory theft under § 52-564: following an evaluation of the competing public policy considerations, including the underlying purpose of judicial proceedings, the similarity between statutory theft and claims of fraud and defamation, which are protected by the privilege, and the availability of other remedies, this court reasoned that the plaintiff's claim of statu- tory theft did not require a consideration of whether the underlying purpose of the foreclosure litigation was improper, rather, the plaintiff's claim raised the issue of whether an attorney's conduct, while represent- ing a client during a judicial proceedi