Berka v. Middletown

Syllabus

The plaintiff filed four separate appeals against the defendant city of Middle- town, challenging, inter alia, the issuance of blight orders against certain of the plaintiff's real property, and the rejection of his application for a special exception to operate a sober house at the same property. The trial court granted the defendant's motions to dismiss the four complaints for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, from which the plain- tiff filed separate appeals to this court. Held: 1. In the appeal in Docket No. AC 41902, the plaintiff could not prevail on his claim that the city's blight ordinance violated, inter alia, his due process rights, as the trial court did not err in dismissing the plaintiff's appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction; the plaintiff had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies when he prematurely filed the appeal directly from the issuance of the blight citation, and prior to the defendant issuing a failure to pay fines notice in violation of the proce- dure as set forth by statute (§ 7-152c), and, therefore, there was no ruling by a hearing officer from which the plaintiff could have properly appealed to the trial court. 2. In the appeal in Docket No. AC 42138, this court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the appeal, as the plaintiff failed to timely seek from this court certification for review of the judgment of dismissal, pursuant to statute (§ 8-8 (o)); the plaintiff never received the requisite affirmative vote of two judges that would have allowed him to appeal to this court and, accordingly, this appeal was dismissed. 3. In the appeal in Docket No. AC 42139, the trial court improperly granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the appeal for lack of an actual contro- versy with respect to the plaintiff's assertion of constitutional claims in an individual capacity challenging the defendant's blight ordinance; the defendant submitted uncontroverted evidence that it had issued blight citations and fines to the plain