Lafferty v. Jones

Citations

• 229 Conn. App. 487

Syllabus

The defendants, J and his company, F Co., appealed from the judgments of the trial court rendered following jury verdicts for the plaintiffs in three underlying consolidated actions that arose out of the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The court had defaulted the defendants as a sanction for their repeated, wilful failure to fully and fairly comply with the plaintiffs' discovery requests and for violating a protective order. The cases then proceeded to a hearing in damages, after which the plaintiffs were awarded compensatory damages, attorney's fees and costs and, pursuant to the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), General Statutes § 42-110a et seq., punitive damages. On appeal, the defendants claimed, inter alia, that the court incorrectly concluded that the plaintiffs' allegations were sufficient to support a legally viable CUTPA claim. Held: The trial court properly exercised its discretion in defaulting the defendants as a sanction for their violations of its discovery orders and a protective order. The trial court's default order was a sanction that was proportional to the defendants' wilful noncompliance and misconduct in repeatedly failing to produce critical documents that the plaintiffs needed to prosecute their case and in making highly confidential information about the plaintiffs avail- able on the Internet. The plaintiffs had no responsibility, as the defendants claimed, to prove the cause of the harm they suffered, as the effect of the trial court's default order was to conclusively establish the defendants' liability, thereby leaving the plaintiffs with only the burden of establishing their damages. The defendants' inadequately briefed claim that the trial court improperly limited the scope of J's testimony was deemed abandoned. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendants' motion for remittitur, as the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's damages award, which did not s