Berka v. Middletown

Citations

• 205 Conn. App. 213

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed to the Superior Court from the decision of the defen- dant citation hearing officer for the defendant city of Middletown uphold- ing a citation assessed against him for violating the city's anti-blight ordinance. The court upheld six of the seven blight violations alleged against the plaintiff and calculated a resulting fine, from which the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court properly granted the defendants' motion to strike the plaintiff's request for a jury trial; the plaintiff cited no authority that would support his challenge to the plain language of the rule of practice (§ 23-51) that governs petitions to reopen citation assessments and pro- vides that there is no right to a hearing before a jury in such circum- stances. 2. The plaintiff could not prevail on his claim that the citation hearing officer had a conflict of interest: the plaintiff never raised this issue before the citation hearing officer, which precluded him from raising the issue on appeal; moreover, even if the citation hearing officer had a conflict of interest, the hearing on appeal before the trial court was a de novo proceeding, and any possible prejudice would have been cured because the decision of the trial court, not that of the citation hearing officer, was on appeal. 3. This court declined to address the merits of the plaintiff's constitutional claims as they were not properly before the trial court, which never ruled on them, and could not be reviewed for the first time on appeal: the plaintiff filed a request to amend his complaint that included constitu- tional claims three days prior to the de novo hearing, and his attempted amendment failed to comport with the requirements of the rules of practice (§§ 10-1 and 10-60) regarding the amendment of pleadings, such that the court sustained the defendants' objection to the plaintiff's request to amend; accordingly, the court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to permit the plaintiff to