Collier v. Adar Hartford Realty, LLC

Citations

• 349 Conn. 822

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, former residents of a federally subsidized housing complex that was owned and managed by the defendants, appealed from the trial court's denial of their motion for class certification. In their com- plaint, the plaintiffs alleged, among other causes of action, fraud, reck- lessness, negligence, breach of the warranty of habitability, and a violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (42-110a et seq.) in connection with the defendants' alleged failure to maintain the housing complex in a safe and habitable condition and their pattern and practice of delaying inspections, concealing health and safety hazards, and vio- lating federal, state, and local housing laws. The trial court denied the plaintiffs' motion for class certification on the ground that their proposed class, which consisted of all persons who resided at the housing complex between 2004 and 2019 who were adversely affected by the defendants' alleged practices, failed to satisfy the predominance and superiority requirements under the rule of practice (§ 9-8 (3)) governing class action certification. The trial court reasoned that the predominance require- ment was not met because the determination of whether each unit in the housing complex was rendered uninhabitable was fact-specific and dependent on individualized factors and that the superiority requirement was not met due to the highly individualized proof required to establish liability. Although the trial court recognized that there could exist a basis for class certification with respect to certain of the plaintiffs' claims for some of the discrete events alleged in the complaint, such as a sewage backup in 2019 that resulted in the tenants' evacuation of the housing complex, the court concluded that the proposed class of all former tenants over a period of many years was too broad. Held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the plaintiffs' motion for class certification, as the proposed class of pl