Court Rulings

This case involves a motion by the defendants to enforce an alleged "walkaway settlement" agreement. The defendants argued that the plaintiffs—through their former attorney— agreed to a binding settlement agreement. After an evidentiary hearing on the motion, the trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case. The trial court's decision is affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.

The magistrate's decision recommending denial of the writ of mandamus seeking an order vacating the Industrial Commission's grant of permanent total disability compensation to relator's employee is adopted in its entirety. Relator filed no objections and our review, under Civ.R. 53(D)(4)(c), reveals no error of law or other evident defect in the magistrate's decision.

Roy Evans, Defendant, admitted to violating the conditions of probation and submitted the sentencing determination to the trial court. Following a hearing on the sentence, the trial court revoked probation and suspension of the sentence and ordered Defendant to commence the execution of the judgment as originally entered. Discerning no error, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The defendant, whose marriage to the plaintiff previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court challenging an order issued by the trial court in connection with its denial of the plaintiff's postjudgment motion for contempt. Under the parties' separation agreement, which was incor- porated into the judgment of dissolution, the defendant was required to pay to the plaintiff, as child support, alimony, and/or property distribu- tion, certain percentages of the net income that he received from his employer in the form of cash bonuses and stock awards. In 2015, the plaintiff filed a postjudgment motion for contempt, claiming that the defendant had failed to pay certain amounts required under the separa- tion agreement. The trial court issued an order in connection therewith, requiring that the annual amounts paid with respect to the defendant's bonus and stock funds be based on his effective tax rate from the prior year. The plaintiff filed another motion for contempt alleging, inter alia, that the defendant violated the dissolution judgment by deducting extra amounts from his bonus and stock payments for taxes that he did not actually pay. The defendant asserted that these amounts were properly deducted because his net proceeds were to be calculated using his marginal tax rate rather than his effective tax rate. After a four day hearing, during which neither of the parties ever mentioned the 2015 order, the trial court found that the defendant's noncompliance was not wilful, but it issued a remedial order that required that he reimburse the plaintiff for certain funds based on its conclusion that the term ''net,'' as used in the separation agreement, clearly and unambiguously did not contemplate the consideration of his net income to calculate the amount of his bonus and stock income that was subject to distribution to the plaintiff, and the defendant appealed to this court. Held that the trial court's analysis underlying its conclusion that the meaning of the

The substitute plaintiff sought to foreclose a commercial mortgage on certain real property of the defendant U Co., which had leased the property from the defendant city of Hartford to construct an apartment complex. After U Co. failed to make payments on the loan, it executed two more mortgages, each of which was secured by a separate note. When the notes and mortgages were thereafter sold to the substitute plaintiff, it was provided with an affidavit in which the seller averred that one of the original notes had been lost. U Co. and its management agent, the defendant C Co., claimed that the substitute plaintiff lacked standing to foreclose the mortgage because it could not produce the lost note and, thus, that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. The trial court determined that, pursuant to New England Savings Bank v. Bedford Realty Corp. (238 Conn. 745), the substitute plaintiff's failure to produce the lost note did not deprive it of standing to foreclose the mortgage. The court thereafter rendered judgment of strict foreclosure. On appeal to this court, U Co. and C Co. claimed, inter alia, that the trial court erred in concluding that the plaintiff had standing to foreclose the mortgage, and the city claimed that, in making that determination, the trial court improperly relied on New England Savings Bank, which, the city contended, had been overruled sub silentio or improperly decided. Held that the judgment of the trial court was affirmed, and because that court aptly addressed the arguments raised by U Co. and C Co., this court adopted the trial court's thorough and well reasoned decision as a proper statement of the facts and applicable law on the issues; moreover, the city's unpreserved claim that the trial court improp- erly relied on New England Savings Bank or, in the alternative, that that case was wrongly decided, was unavailing, as this court declined to presume that our Supreme Court intended to overrule its long-standing precedent in

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant for, inter alia, disability discrimination pursuant to the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (§ 46a-51 et seq.) and for interference with the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (29 U.S.C. § 2601 et seq.) following the termination of her employment. The plaintiff was first hired by the defendant in 1995 but her position was eliminated and she was termi- nated in June, 2015. The plaintiff was rehired for a new position in August, 2015, and was subject to a probationary period for her first 120 days at work. In September, 2015, the plaintiff injured her left knee and lower back while at work. The plaintiff was placed on modified work duty but was eventually placed on an indefinite leave of absence and remained on leave until October, 2015. She missed additional work in November, 2015, after she experienced a flare-up of her knee injury. All of the time that she missed from work was considered workers' compensation leave by the defendant. The plaintiff received two negative performance evaluations in January and February, 2016, based solely on her performance while she was at work. The plaintiff was terminated for her poor job performance in March, 2016. During the trial on the plaintiff's complaint, the trial court declined to instruct the jury on the plaintiff's FMLA interference claim, concluding that there was no evidence to support the claim that the plaintiff made an FMLA request to the defendant. On the plaintiff's remaining claims, the jury returned a verdict for the defendant and the court rendered judgment in accordance with the verdict, from which the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court properly declined to charge the jury with regard to the plaintiff's claim of interference with the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993: the plaintiff failed to satisfy the preliminary requirement for the court to consider her interference claim, namely, that she made an initial showing

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant, his brother, for breach of an implied in fact contract. The plaintiff started a landscaping company and, although the defendant started working for the plaintiff as an employee, they eventually became de facto equal partners, sharing the profits and management of the business. No written partnership agreement was ever entered into by the parties. At one point, the defen- dant formed a limited liability company with himself as the sole member because the plaintiff lacked a tax identification number, but the business of the LLC was a continuation of the landscape company started by the plaintiff and the parties remained partners. The defendant later locked the plaintiff out of the landscaping business, taking all the customers, crew, tools, vehicles, and equipment along with all the cash in two bank accounts, leaving behind certain masonry/tree equipment and vehicles. At that time, landscaping represented 90 percent of the business income and the portion left to the plaintiff represented only 10 percent of the revenue. The trial court found that an implied partnership existed between the parties and that the defendant breached the terms of the partnership agreement, and it rejected the defendant's special defenses. From the judgment rendered for the plaintiff, the defendant appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court's finding that there was an implied partnership agreement between the parties was not clearly erroneous; the court's finding was supported by ample evidence in the record that the parties regarded each other as partners, including evidence that both the plaintiff and the defendant were compensated by withdrawals from the business account for personal expenses, they jointly managed the business and shared its profits, and they jointly purchased real estate using corpo- rate funds. 2. The trial court did not err in concluding that the plaintiff provided credible evidence of his damages; the co