Hope v. Willimantic Partners, LLC

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from the trial court's judgment, rendered after a jury trial, for the plaintiffs, H and O, who had alleged that they were injured when H slipped and fell on top of O in a parking lot owned by the defendant. H died prior to trial, and a video recorded statement by H was admitted as a full exhibit at trial pursuant to the dead man's statute (§ 52-172). The jury first returned a verdict for the plaintiffs, finding them each 70 percent neg- ligent and the defendant 30 percent negligent. After the court reinstructed the jury regarding comparative negligence, the jury found the defendant 100 percent negligent as to both plaintiffs and awarded each plaintiff the same amounts as in the first verdict. On appeal, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly denied its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict because there was insufficient evidence that a defect existed where H fell and that the defendant had actual or constructive knowledge of a specific defect on the premises. Held: The trial court properly denied the defendant's motion for judgment not- withstanding the verdict, as there was sufficient evidence from which the jury reasonably could have found the location of the defect in the parking lot, that the defect existed in the place where H fell, and that the defendant knew or should have known of that specific defect. The trial court properly declined to give the defendant's requested jury charge limiting the use of H's video statement to H's claims only, as neither the text of § 52-172 nor case law warranted an exception to the admissibility of evidence under that statute disallowing its use as to O's claims. The trial court properly denied the defendant's motion to set aside the verdict claiming that the jury, on reconsideration of its initial verdict pursuant to statute (§ 52-223), disregarded the law and the court's instructions, as a jury, on reconsideration, can change its verdict as to both liability and damages