McCrea v. Cumberland Farms, Inc.

Citations

• 204 Conn. App. 796

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, M and P, sought to recover damages for the defendants' alleged negligence as a result of injuries they sustained when their vehicle was struck from behind by the defendants' vehicle. The defen- dants filed a special defense alleging that P was contributorily negligent. Interrogatories were not submitted to the jury, which returned a general verdict for the defendants, and the trial court rendered judgment in their favor. On appeal to this court, the plaintiffs claimed, inter alia, that the trial court improperly prevented them from testifying, for the purpose of rehabilitating their credibility after it had been challenged by the defendants, that the reason their attorney referred them to certain medical providers was because they lacked adequate medical insur- ance. Held: 1. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it allowed the defendants' counsel to question the plaintiffs about their selection of medical provid- ers from a list curated by their attorneys and about a lawsuit M previously had filed that pertained to injuries she sustained in a prior motor vehicle accident: the examination of the plaintiffs by the defendants' counsel as to those issues was relevant to the defendants' claims that the testi- mony of the plaintiffs' medical providers was biased and that M's asser- tion about her injuries being causally related to the motor vehicle colli- sion at issue lacked credibility; moreover, that evidence was properly admitted to challenge the plaintiffs' credibility as to whether they were actually harmed or merely seeking treatment to establish and to augment their damages claim, as credibility was a particularly important issue at trial given the parties' differing versions of the events. 2. The trial court improperly precluded the plaintiffs from presenting evi- dence that they sought treatment from medical providers referred to them by their attorneys due to their lack of adequate medical insurance; the plaintiffs were entitled to