Anderson v. Bloomfield

Citations

• 203 Conn. App. 182

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages caused by an allegedly defective roof installed by the defendant P Co. The defendant town of Bloomfield had hired P Co. to install a new roof on the plaintiff's home pursuant to a residential rehabilitation program, whereby the town offered financial assistance for home improvements to qualified homeowners. Under the program, the town acted on behalf of the homeowner to secure appropriate contractors to do the work and entered into all necessary contracts. P Co. completed work on the plaintiff's roof in July, 2013, and was paid by the town. In October, 2013, the plaintiff noticed water entering her home and an inspection determined that P Co. had installed a defective roof. The plaintiff brought this action alleging in part that P Co. breached its contract to the town when it installed a defective roof and that she was a third-party beneficiary of the contract. The trial court granted P Co.'s motion to dismiss, and rendered judgment thereon, from which the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held that the trial court improperly dismissed the plaintiff's action for lack of standing, that court having improperly determined that the plaintiff was not a third- party beneficiary of the contract: because the language of the contract was ambiguous as to whether the town and P Co. intended for the plaintiff to be a third-party beneficiary of that contract, it was a question for the ultimate fact finder and, thus, the question of whether the plaintiff had standing as a third-party beneficiary could not be resolved without an evidentiary hearing and, because resolution of the factual issue is intertwined with the merits of the case, resolution of this jurisdictional question should be resolved by the ultimate fact finder as part of the trial on the merits; accordingly, this court reversed the judgment of the trial court and remanded this case for further proceedings. Argued November 12, 2020—officially released March 9, 2021