Procurement, LLC v. Ahuja

Citations

• 197 Conn. App. 696

Syllabus

The plaintiff, P Co., a real estate development company, sought damages from the defendant A, a property owner, and the defendant H Co., a real estate holding company, for vexatious litigation in connection with P Co.'s plans to construct a mixed use development project in Stamford. P Co. alleged that the defendants sought to impede its development project through A's opposition to three of P Co.'s zoning applications. The trial court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, determining that A's zoning appeals were protected activity pursuant to the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which shields individuals from liabil- ity for petitioning a government entity for redress in order to advocate their causes regarding business and economic interests. On appeal, P Co. claimed, inter alia, that the trial court erred in concluding that A's appeals were not objectively baseless and, therefore, that the sham exception to the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which does not protect activity brought with no reasonable expectation of obtaining a favorable ruling, was not applicable. Held: 1. The trial court properly determined that there was no genuine issue of material fact and that A's legal actions in contesting various changes to P Co.'s zoning applications did not qualify for the sham exception to the Noerr-Pennington doctrine; contrary to the plaintiff's claim, A's appeals were not objectively baseless and did not become baseless merely because they failed; a reasonable litigant in A's position could have concluded that P. Co.'s failure to comply with the Stamford zoning regulations resulted in an incomplete application, and that the zoning board's failure to post notice of a hearing continuation could have been grounds for an appeal, and, once the trial court determined that at least one claim in an action had objective merit, it was not required to determine whether additional claims in the same action were not objectively baseless. 2. P Co. could not prevail on its clai