Abrahams v. Photos

Citations

• 233 Conn. App. 817

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed from the trial court's judgment granting the defendant attorney's second motion for summary judgment on the plaintiff's complaint alleging, inter alia, legal malpractice. The plaintiff claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly rendered summary judgment for the defendant despite the existence of genuine issues of material fact. Held: The trial court properly granted the defendant's second motion for summary judgment, as the defendant made a showing, by way of the plaintiff's deposi- tion testimony in which he stated multiple times that the defendant was not his attorney, that there was a lack of a genuine issue of material fact as to the nonexistence of an attorney-client relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant, which vitiated every claim in the operative complaint, and the plaintiff subsequently failed to satisfy his burden of presenting evidence demonstrating the existence of a genuine issue of material fact, thereby entitling the defendant to judgment as a matter of law. The trial court properly considered the defendant's second motion for sum- mary judgment because it was not barred by the doctrines of res judicata or collateral estoppel, as the court's denial of the defendant's first motion for summary judgment was not a final judgment, the defendant was not otherwise precluded from filing his second motion, and it was within the trial court's discretion to consider the renewed motion for summary judg- ment that had previously been denied where additional or new evidence had been submitted that was not before the court in ruling upon the earlier motion for summary judgment. The trial court did not improperly fail to enter a default judgment against the defendant for filing his second motion for summary judgment in an untimely manner in violation of the order of pleadings set forth in the rule of practice (§ 10-6), as the defendant's filing of his second motion for summary judgment, which was not a pleading, was not proced