C & H Shoreline, LLC v. Rubino

Citations

• 203 Conn. App. 351

Syllabus

The plaintiff home cleaning company, C Co., sought to recover damages from the defendants for breach of contract in connection with the defendants' failure to pay for services rendered. The parties' agreement contained a one year limitation provision that provided that no action relating to the subject matter of the agreement could be brought more than one year after ''the claiming party'' knew or should have known of the cause of action. The trial court found that by September, 2016, C Co. was aware that the defendants were refusing to pay and did not commence the action until March, 2018. The court therefore found in favor of the defendants on their special defense that the action was time barred under the agreement. On C Co.'s appeal to this court, held that the trial court properly rendered judgment in favor of the defendants on the basis that C Co.'s claims were contractually time barred; this court concluded that, because C Co. offered a reasonable interpretation of the limitation period, that the term ''claiming party'' referred only to the customer, and the defendants offered a competing reasonable inter- pretation, that the term ''claiming party'' was otherwise not defined in the agreement and the agreement consistently used the terms ''client,'' ''customer,'' and ''provider'' when referring to the parties individually, so that the newly introduced term meant any party bringing a cause of action relating to the agreement, the limitation provision was ambiguous and applied the contra proferentem rule, resolving the ambiguity against C Co. as the undisputed drafter of the agreement and concluding that the one year limitation period applied to any contracting party; accordingly, because there was no dispute that C Co. commenced the action after one year from the time it knew or should have known of it, its claims were contractually time barred. Argued January 6—officially released March 16, 2021