Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities v. Cantillon

Citations

• 347 Conn. 58

Syllabus

The complainant, H, filed a complaint with the plaintiff, the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, alleging housing discrimination on the basis of race against the defendant C, her neighbor in a condominium complex, who tormented H by repeatedly making obscene gestures, directing vile, racial epithets toward her, and threatening her. C was defaulted in the underlying administrative proceeding, and, following a hearing in damages, the human rights referee found that H had suffered emotional distress and awarded her $15,000 in damages. The commis- sion, viewing the award as insufficient, appealed to the Superior Court, claiming that, under Patino v. Birken Mfg. Co. (304 Conn. 679), an award for garden-variety emotional distress damages presumptively must be at least $30,000, and that the referee made various errors of law in assessing the heinousness of C's conduct pursuant to the test that the commission adopted in its prior decision in Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities ex rel. Harrison v. Greco (Harrison). The trial court, recognizing that it was bound by the highly deferential standard of review that governs administrative decisions, concluded that there was no legal basis for it to second-guess the award, and it rendered judgment dismissing the appeal. The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's judgment, concluding that Patino did not adopt any presumptive floor for emotional distress damages and that the referee's heavily fact- specific assessment of H's emotional distress damages was not an abuse of discretion. On the granting of certification, the commission appealed to this court. Held: 1. There was no merit to the commission's claim that the referee's award of $15,000 in damages violated Patino, an employment discrimination case in which this court upheld a jury award of more than $90,000 in noneconomic damages for garden-variety emotional distress: In Patino, the court cited to a series of cases in which awards of $100,000 or more had b