Kuselias v. Zingaro & Cretella, LLC

Citations

• 224 Conn. App. 192

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendants, an attorney and the law firm with which he was engaged in the practice of law, for their alleged legal malpractice in connection with their representation of her during certain postdissolution proceedings. The trial court had rendered a judgment of nonsuit in a prior action against these same defendants as a result of the plaintiff's failure to comply with certain discovery orders and thereafter denied the plaintiff's motion to open the judgment. The plaintiff commenced the present action pursuant to the accidental failure of suit statute (§ 52-592), alleging, inter alia, that the defendants had entered into a stipulation with the plaintiff's former husband and his attorney that had been reached without her participa- tion and, as a result, she had incurred additional legal fees, loss of income and financial obligations. The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiff's prior action against the defendants alleged nearly identical claims, and that her claims of legal malpractice and negligent misrepresentation were time barred and could not be saved by § 52-592. The defendants argued that the prior action had resulted in a judgment of nonsuit against the plaintiff for disciplinary reasons following her noncompliance with the court's discovery orders and, therefore, that judgment had not been rendered as a result of a matter of form. The trial court rendered judgment granting the defen- dants' motion for summary judgment, observing that it was undisputed that, at the time of the hearing on the motion to open the judgment of nonsuit, the plaintiff had still not disclosed an expert witness, and that the plaintiff's attorney, V, had claimed at the hearing that an expert had not been disclosed because he did not want to ask the plaintiff to pay for an expert witness after a judgment of nonsuit had been rendered. The court concluded that the failure to disclose an expert was a delib