JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Durante

Citations

• 227 Conn. App. 617

Syllabus

The defendant guarantor appealed to this court from the trial court's granting of a motion for approval of trial and appellate court costs and attorney's fees filed by the plaintiff note holder pursuant to the terms of the promissory note, following judgment rendered in its favor on its breach of guarantee claim. The defendant claimed that the plaintiff's motion was not timely filed pursuant to the rule of practice (§ 11-21) governing motions for attorney's fees and was made without any showing of excus- able neglect to permit the late filing. Held: 1. The plaintiff could not prevail on its claim that Practice Book § 11-21 did not apply to its motion for contractual attorney's fees, as opposed to statutory attorney's fees: the text of Practice Book § 11-21 makes it clear that the rule applies to attorney's fees sought postjudgment and not to those attorney's fees assessed as a component of damages, and to the extent there is ambiguity as to whether the rule governs contractual attorney's fees, the commentary to the rule and dicta in Meadowbrook Center, Inc. v. Buchman (328 Conn. 586) support this court's construc- tion that postjudgment motions for contractual attorney's fees are sub- ject to the rule; moreover, to the extent that the plaintiff contended that the trial court's award of attorney's fees constituted an award of damages, the plaintiff did not identify any support in the record for that proposition, it did not suggest any legal theory that could support a postjudgment award of contractual attorney's fees incurred entirely in connection with the prosecution of the plaintiff's breach of guarantee claim as damages, and the fact that the plaintiff sought attorney's fees for the first time postjudgment and following an appeal without remand readily distinguished the court's award of attorney's fees from an award of attorney's fees assessed as a component of damages, and, accordingly, Practice Book § 11-21 applied, as a matter of fact, to the plaintiff's motio