Murphy v. Clinton

Citations

• 217 Conn. App. 182

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought, pursuant to the municipal defective highway statute (§ 13a-149), to recover damages and other relief for personal injuries she sustained when she fell on a road owned by the defendant town. The plaintiff tripped after stepping into a defective water main hole cover that had sunken below the grade of the surrounding pavement. One month later, the plaintiff, via certified mail, sent to the defendant a written notice of her injuries and of her intent to commence a civil action pursuant to § 13a-149. The plaintiff included three color photo- graphs in the notice, in which the water main hole cover was visible from three different distances within the intersection, and the plaintiff referenced the three photographs in her notice. The trial court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint, finding that the court lacked jurisdiction because the notice provided by the plaintiff was deficient because of the absence of a statement describing what the alleged defect was and the use of mere conclusory statements of a defect. The trial court also stated that attaching photographs to the notice did not remedy the absence of descriptive language of the alleged defect in the plaintiff's complaint. On the plaintiff's appeal to this court, held that the trial court improperly granted the defendant's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction as the language of the plaintiff's notice and the appended photographs, considered together, sufficiently described the cause of her injury and patently met the requirements of § 13a-149: the defendant was suffi- ciently notified of the cause of the plaintiff's injury and its precise location and condition such that it could identify, and begin its investiga- tion into, the defective condition of the water main hole cover, and to require more of a notice would go beyond the statutory requirements of § 13a-149; moreover, the trial court improperly concluded that the photog