Graham v. Commissioner of Transportation

Citations

• 206 Conn. App. 497

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant Commissioner of Transportation pursuant to the state defective highway statute (§ 13a- 144), for injuries that he sustained as a result of a motor vehicle accident that occurred on a bridge over a public highway. The plaintiff alleged that the accident was caused by black ice on the bridge, which he claimed constituted a highway defect. Before the plaintiff's accident, the state police had informed the Department of Transportation of another ice related accident on the bridge. The plaintiff's accident occurred before the arrival of the department's crew. The case was tried to a jury and, after three days of deliberations, the jury attempted to return a plaintiff's verdict while also answering ''no'' to an interrogatory that asked the jury whether it found that the defendant had a reasonable amount of time to remedy the defect before the plaintiff's accident. After the trial court returned the jury to continue its deliberations, the jury returned with a defendant's verdict, maintaining its ''no'' answer to the interrogatory. The trial court accepted the verdict, denied the plaintiff's motion to set aside the verdict, and this appeal followed. Held: 1. The plaintiff could not prevail on his claim that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to accept the jury's initial verdict and by returning the jury to continue its deliberations to rectify an inconsistency in its verdict: the jury found, in its answer to the interrogatory, that the defen- dant did not have a reasonable amount of time to remedy the defect, and, accordingly, the defendant could not be liable to the plaintiff and the trial court correctly concluded that the initial verdict in favor of the plaintiff was inconsistent with its response to the interrogatory; moreover, this court did not consider the plaintiff's claims that the interrogatory was confusing and suffered from inartful wording because he did not timely object to the inclusion