Quicken Loans, Inc. v. Rodriguez

Citations

• 227 Conn. App. 806

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendants M and J. After defaulting the defendants for failure to plead, the trial court rendered a judgment of foreclosure by sale. The property was then sold to the plaintiff, and the trial court approved the sale. M timely filed a motion to set aside the court's approval of the sale. The defendants, however, never marked the motion as ready for adjudication, and, accordingly, the court did not act on it. Thereafter, the case was administratively closed. Approximately three months later, the defendants filed a motion to open, requesting that the trial court vacate the administrative closure and open and vacate the judgment of foreclosure by sale. The trial court denied the defendants' motion to open and sustained the plaintiff's objection thereto, and the defendants appealed to this court. Held: 1. This court concluded that any error by the trial court in its misinterpreta- tion or misapplication of the applicable rule of practice (§ 63-1 (c) (1)) regarding the existence of an appellate stay following M's filing of the motion to set aside the approval of the sale was harmless and did not provide a reasonable basis for reversing the trial court's judgment on the defendants' motion to open: although, pursuant to Practice Book § 63-1 (c) (1), M's filing of the motion to set aside the approval of the sale extended the appellate stay that was in effect as a result of the court's approval of the sale until there was a ruling on that motion and any resulting new appeal period expired, the court's decision to enter the administrative closure of the file either acted as an implicit denial of M's motion or served as notice to the parties that the court was declining to rule on that motion, which the defendants reasonably should have construed as an effective denial of the motion pursuant to Ahneman v. Ahneman (243 Conn. 471); moreover, to the extent that M's filing of the motion to set aside