Booth v. Park Terrace II Mutual Housing Ltd. Partnership

Citations

• 217 Conn. App. 398

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages for injuries he sustained when he allegedly tripped and fell on a concrete walkway separating the lawns of two buildings on a property owned by the defendants P Co. and M Co. The defendants C Co. and T Co. were hired to work on a rehabilitation project on the property. The plaintiff alleged that he tripped on the raised edge of the walkway, which was perpendicular to and abutted the front sidewalk between the two buildings. He claimed that the raised edge created a hazardous condition. During the pretrial proceedings, P Co. and M Co. served the plaintiff with a request for admission pursuant to the applicable rule of practice (§ 13-22). The request stated that an attached photograph fairly and accurately depicted the location of the plaintiff's fall, and that the alleged proximately causative defect of the claimed fall as asserted in the complaint was encircled in red on the photograph. The plaintiff did not answer or object to the request for admission, and the request for admission was deemed admitted. There- after, P Co. and M Co. filed an expert witness disclosure, which repre- sented that the expected testimony of their expert, C, was that the plaintiff's fall did not occur on their property but on land owned by the city of Hartford. Subsequently, the defendants filed motions for summary judgment, claiming, inter alia, that the plaintiff's fall occurred on a public sidewalk owned and maintained by the city of Hartford and that they had no legal duty to maintain or repair the sidewalk. In support thereof, they attached an affidavit of C, who averred that he had performed a comprehensive land survey of the property and that the area circled on the photograph attached to the request for admission was not private property of the abutting owner but was a public sidewalk owned and maintained by the city of Hartford. The defendants further argued that the exceptions to the general rule absolving property owners of liability for