Marland v. University of Connecticut Health Center

Citations

• 350 Conn. 830

Syllabus

The plaintiff, individually and as administratrix of the estate of the decedent, appealed from the judgment of the trial court, which had dismissed the plaintiff's medical malpractice action against the state defendants for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. In dismissing the action, the trial court specifi- cally concluded that the claims commissioner's waiver of the state's sover- eign immunity pursuant to statute ((Rev. to 2015) § 4-160 (b)) was not valid because the purported waiver occurred after the expiration of a one year extension of time that the General Assembly had granted to the commis- sioner to dispose of the plaintiff's claim. The plaintiff contended that the trial court had incorrectly concluded that the commissioner's waiver was not valid. Held: This court concluded that the present case was controlled by its recent decision in Lynch v. State (348 Conn. 478), in which this court held that, unlike the more typical claim that the allegations in a plaintiff's complaint do not fall within the scope of the claims commissioner's waiver of sovereign immunity, a challenge to the commissioner's decision to waive sovereign immunity and to grant permission to sue the state is not reviewable by a court, and such a challenge should be raised before the claims commissioner, if at all. In the present case, the defendants' challenge in the trial court to the plain- tiff's claims did not concern whether those claims fell within the scope of the waiver of sovereign immunity granted by the claims commissioner, as they undisputably did, but, rather, concerned whether the commissioner had the authority to grant a waiver of sovereign immunity after the expiration of the one year extension granted by the legislature. The defendants failed to raise their claim regarding the authority of the claims commissioner to waive sovereign immunity before the commissioner in the first instance, once the commissioner authorized suit, the defendants waived all defenses to the claims