S. A. v. D. G.

Citations

• 198 Conn. App. 170

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court granting the application for a civil protection order filed pursuant to statute (§ 46b-16a) by the plaintiff, an executive assistant to the first selectman of a Connecticut town. On two occasions in 2018, the defen- dant, a town resident, visited the first selectman's office where the plaintiff worked, and, during the second visit, the police were called and the defendant was arrested for breach of the peace. In her applica- tion, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant stalked her and caused her to fear for her safety at work and at her home, and, in an accompanying affidavit, described, how the defendant had threatened and harassed her. Following a hearing at which the parties, the first selectman and V, an employee of the town's tax collector's office testified, the trial court found that the requirements of § 46b-16a had been satisfied, and, therefore, it granted the plaintiff's application and issued a protection order. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court abused its discretion by excluding evidence of certain audio and videotape recordings that he offered at the hearing on the application for a protec- tion order, that court having properly determined that the recordings were not relevant to its determination of whether to grant the applica- tion: the recording of a conversation between the defendant and the first selectman that purportedly contained audio evidence of the first selectman using coarse language at the town hall and calling the defen- dant inappropriate names would not have aided the court because it would not have made the existence of any fact material to whether the defendant's behavior toward the plaintiff reasonably could have caused her to fear for her physical safety more or less probable than it would have been without the evidence, and, to the extent that the defendant sought to argue that the first selectman's use of such lan