Manson v. Conklin

Citations

• 197 Conn. App. 51

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant police officer, C, and the defendant city of New Haven for, inter alia, negligence in connection with injuries he sustained when he collided with C's police cruiser while riding his dirt bike on a municipal street. In response to the plaintiff's complaint, the defendants alleged a number of special defenses, including that the plaintiff's claims were barred by governmen- tal immunity because C was engaged in discretionary acts at the time of the accident. Prior to trial, the defendants filed a motion in limine to preclude the admission of any impeachment evidence relating to prior alleged misconduct by C. The plaintiff filed an objection to which he attached copies of three internal affairs reports authored by the New Haven Police Department, which described three instances in which C had engaged in misconduct and dishonesty during interactions with the public and then had misrepresented the nature of those interactions in official police reports or in response to internal affairs investigations. The trial court granted the defendants' motion in limine with respect to the internal affairs reports and the information contained therein. Following trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendants. On the verdict form, the jury indicated that the plaintiff had failed to prove by a fair preponderance of the evidence that C or the city was negligent. Thereafter, the trial court rendered judgment in accordance with the verdict, and the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held: 1. Contrary to the plaintiff's claim, the trial court properly precluded the admission of the findings and conclusions by the police department in the internal affairs reports that C had engaged in misconduct and was dishonest; those findings and conclusions constituted extrinsic evidence of alleged prior misconduct because they reflected the opinions of the police department that C had acted untruthfully, and, therefore, pursuant t