Menard v. State

208 Conn. App. 303
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedOctober 19, 2021
DocketAC42342
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 208 Conn. App. 303 (Menard v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Connecticut Appellate Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Menard v. State, 208 Conn. App. 303 (Colo. Ct. App. 2021).

Opinion

*********************************************** The “officially released” date that appears near the be- ginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be pub- lished in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the be- ginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion.

All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative.

The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** SCOTT MENARD v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT DARREN CONNOLLY v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT ROBERT ZDROJESKI v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT (AC 42342) Bright, C. J., and Moll and Bear, Js.

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, M and C, Connecticut State Police troopers who suffered injuries when a motor vehicle driven by a nonparty tortfeasor, B, struck a police cruiser, sending it into physical contact with them, sought to recover underinsured motorist benefits allegedly due under insurance coverage provided by the defendant state of Connecticut, a self-insurer, pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement. Following a bench trial, the trial court found, inter alia, that, to the extent B was underinsured, the state was contractually obligated to provide coverage to the plain- tiffs, the plaintiffs’ claims for damages caused by the alleged post-trau- matic stress disorder (PTSD) they developed were not compensable under the underinsured motorist claims statute (§ 38a-336), and it calcu- lated the plaintiffs’ damages. The plaintiffs filed a joint appeal to this court. The parties then filed a stipulation before the trial court regarding sums that the plaintiffs had already received, and the court held a hearing to consider any reductions to the plaintiffs’ damages. It concluded that certain workers’ compensation benefits the plaintiffs had received were deductible from the plaintiffs’ damages, but that certain recoveries the plaintiffs received under the Dram Shop Act (§ 30-102) were not, adjusted the plaintiffs’ damages accordingly, and rendered judgments for the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs then filed an amended joint appeal, and the state filed a cross appeal to this court. Held: 1. This court concluded that the plaintiffs’ original joint appeal was not taken from final judgments and it must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, but the plaintiffs’ amended joint appeal was jurisdic- tionally proper; final judgments were not rendered in the trial court until the court had reduced the plaintiffs’ damages to account for certain sums received by the plaintiffs, which occurred after the original appeal had been filed; the plaintiffs’ amended joint appeal encompassed all of the claims raised by the plaintiffs in their original joint appeal, and this court could review all of the plaintiffs’ claims in the context of their amended joint appeal. 2. The trial court properly declined to award the plaintiffs damages related to their claims of PTSD, as those claims were not compensable under § 38a-336: guided by our Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Continen- tal Casualty Co. (252 Conn. 405), in which the term bodily was deter- mined to relate to something physical and corporeal, as opposed to purely emotional, this court concluded that bodily injury in § 38a-336 (a) (1) (A) must necessarily be physical in nature, and, under that interpretation, PTSD, in and of itself as a purely emotional injury, could not be construed as a ‘‘bodily injury’’ within the purview of § 38a-336; moreover, guided by the rationale in Moore, in which the question was the legal meaning of ‘‘bodily injury’’ as defined in an insurance policy and not the medical or scientific question of the degree to which the mind and the body affect each other, this court was not convinced that the PTSD purportedly developed by the plaintiffs was transformed into a ‘‘bodily injury’’ under the statute by virtue of the physical manifestations accompanying it. 3. The trial court properly reduced the plaintiffs’ damages by the sums of certain workers’ compensation benefits they had received, as the statu- tory and regulatory scheme governing underinsured motorist coverage in Connecticut did not impose a requirement on a self-insurer to notify claimants of an election of permissive offsets under the applicable state regulation (§ 38a-334-6): although, as a self-insurer, the state must main- tain a preaccident writing reflecting its election of permissive regulatory offsets as mandated by Piersa v. Phoenix Ins. Co. (273 Conn. 519) and clarified in Garcia v. Bridgeport (306 Conn. 340), it had no legal obliga- tion to provide its employees with notice of its election to offset its liability for underinsured motorist benefits by the amount of any work- ers’ compensation benefits paid, as our Supreme Court expressly con- strued § 38a-334-6 of the regulations not to be a notice provision, determining that it served the substantive function of specifying the basic requirement of how an insurer may limit its liability, and the court made no mention of self-insurers providing claimants with copies of such written documents or otherwise notifying claimants of the election of permissive regulatory offsets; accordingly, it was sufficient for the state to maintain a written memorandum containing its election in its files as a public record. 4. The trial court committed error in declining to reduce C’s damages by the sums he had recovered pursuant to the Dram Shop Act, as C was being compensated twice for the same injury; the parties stipulated that, among other sums received by C, he recovered certain sums from an establishment under the act as compensatory damages, and, without a reduction of C’s damages to account for his dram shop recovery, C was compensated twice for the same injury in violation of the common-law rule precluding double recovery, a legal principle ingrained in this state’s underinsured motorist laws. 5. This court concluded that, because neither plaintiff was entitled to recover damages against the state, the trial court, on remand, must render judg- ments in favor of the state in the plaintiffs’ respective cases. Argued March 9—officially released October 19, 2021

Procedural History

Actions to recover underinsured motorist benefits allegedly due under automobile insurance coverage pro- vided by the defendant pursuant to a collective bar- gaining agreement, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Hartford, where the matters were consolidated and tried to the court, Shapiro, J.; decision for the plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs appealed to this court; thereafter, the court, Hon. Robert B. Shapiro, judge trial referee, granted in part the defendant’s motion for remittitur and a collateral source hearing and rendered judgments for the plaintiffs, from which the plaintiffs filed an amended appeal and the defendant cross appealed to this court; subsequently, the plaintiff Robert Zdrojeski withdrew his appeal. Appeal dis- missed in part; reversed in part; judgments directed. Daniel J. Krisch, with whom, on the brief, was Jeffrey L.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Menard v. State
346 Conn. 506 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 2023)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
208 Conn. App. 303, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/menard-v-state-connappct-2021.