L. D. v. Commissioner of Children & Families

Citations

• 217 Conn. App. 150

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dismissing his administrative appeal from the decision of a hearing officer of the defendant Commissioner of Children and Families, who upheld the Department of Children and Families' decision to substantiate allegations of emotional neglect by the plaintiff against three of his minor children stemming from two incidents. The plaintiff and the children's mother had recently been involved in contentious dissolution proceed- ings and the police and the department were called multiple times to address family relations. The two incidents involved the plaintiff's interactions with his three children during his visits with them. In the first incident, the plaintiff, when picking the children up from their mother's house, had an irate reaction upon learning of a missing bag he asked one child to bring with him, exited the car and began screaming and cursing, drove his car out of the driveway while one of his children's doors remained open, and proceeded to drive with the children in an erratic and dangerous manner. In the second incident, the plaintiff was in his vehicle with his three children as passengers, became angry and hit one child's arm, eventually dragging the child out of the car, and subsequently hit another child in the face when she intervened, which resulted in bruising and scratches on the children. The plaintiff claimed that the court improperly concluded that there was substantial evidence in the record to support the findings of emotional neglect. Held that the trial court properly dismissed the plaintiff's administrative appeal and determined that the hearing officer did not act unreasonably, arbi- trarily, illegally, or in abuse of her discretion in upholding the depart- ment's substantiation of the allegations of emotional neglect, as a review of the record revealed substantial evidence to support the hearing offi- cer's findings and conclusions regarding the two allegations of