Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. v. Speer

Citations

• 225 Conn. App. 439

Syllabus

The plaintiff bank sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendant S, who filed an answer and ten special defenses. Approximately two years later, S filed a request for leave to amend her answer and special defenses to include a five count counterclaim, seek- ing damages for, inter alia, alleged property damage and trespass. In the counterclaim, S claimed that the plaintiff's agents had, inter alia, broken a door to the property, taken certain construction materials from it, and replaced the locks, which S alleged interfered with her ability to rent and repair the property. The plaintiff objected to S's request, arguing that her allegations were unfounded, that the counterclaim was not made on the basis of new information, and that S failed to show good cause to allow the amendment at that stage of the proceedings. The trial court sustained the plaintiff's objection. S filed a second request for leave to amend her answer, which included a counterclaim asserting the same five counts, but added that the plaintiff's agents had more recently trespassed on her property. The trial court again sustained the plaintiff's objection to the request, which contained the same grounds as the first objection. The plaintiff thereafter withdrew the foreclosure action. S appealed to this court, claiming that the trial court abused its discretion in sustaining the plaintiff's objections because her proposed amendments were timely and would not have prejudiced the plaintiff. Held: 1. The plaintiff could not prevail on its claim that this appeal should be dismissed as moot because, having withdrawn its action before any counterclaim had been filed against it, no practical relief could be afforded to S on the basis of any such unfiled claim: this court concluded that the appeal was not moot because it could provide practical relief to S if it decided her claim on the merits, despite the plaintiff having withdrawn its foreclosure action, namely, that, if this