Ferri v. Powell-Ferri

Citations

• 200 Conn. App. 63

Syllabus

The plaintiff, F, whose marriage to the defendant, P, previously had been dissolved, appealed to this court from the summary judgment rendered in favor of the defendants, an attorney and a law firm, who represented P in several interrelated dissolution proceedings. F sought to recover damages from the defendants as a result of alleged vexatious litigation, which arose out of a declaratory judgment action involving a trust. F was the beneficiary of the trust and, during the pending dissolution matter, the trustees, without F's knowledge or consent, formed a new trust and decanted the assets of the original trust into the new one. The trustees then brought a declaratory judgment action, seeking approval of their actions in forming the new trust. The defendants brought a cross complaint against F in the declaratory judgment action, alleging that F violated his duty to preserve marital assets by allowing the trustees to remove assets from the marital estate. The trial court rendered sum- mary judgment in favor of F on the cross complaint, concluding that P failed to state a cause of action. On appeal, F claimed, inter alia, that the trial court erred in determining that the defendants had probable cause to bring the cross complaint. Held that the trial court properly granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment as that court properly determined that the defendants had probable cause to bring and to prosecute the cross complaint; contrary to F's argument, the trial court applied the correct standard for determining whether the defendants had probable cause to prosecute the cross complaint, and properly determined that a meritless action did not necessitate the conclusion that it lacked probable cause or was frivolous, the viability of the cross complaint did not depend on any false allegation that F knew of the trustees' intention to decant the original trust prior to the actual decanting and did not allege that F failed to act prior to the decanting, rather, the