Speer v. Skaats

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed from the trial court's judgment granting the defen- dants' motions to dismiss her complaint, in which she sought, inter alia, an injunction requiring the defendants to return to her certain of her confidential records and documents they allegedly had misappropriated in violation of the Connecticut Uniform Trade Secrets Act (CUTSA) (§ 35-50 et seq.). The plaintiff claimed that the court erred in determining that her alleged failure to comply with the three year statute of limitations (§ 35-56) in CUTSA could properly be raised in a motion to dismiss. Held: The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the plaintiff's motion to disqualify the defendants' counsel, L, as the plaintiff failed to demon- strate a common factual issue and a substantial relationship between the present action and L's representation of the plaintiff in an action seventeen years earlier. The trial court improperly rendered judgment for the defendants, as they improperly raised § 35-36 in their motions to dismiss when they were instead required to plead it as a special defense under the applicable rule of practice (§ 10-50). Because the right of action raised in the plaintiff's complaint existed at common law, independent of CUTSA, § 35-56 was not jurisdictional in nature, and there was no indication in the legislative history and case law predating the 1983 enactment of CUTSA that the legislature intended to deprive trial courts of subject matter jurisdiction over untimely trade secret actions; accordingly, the judgment was reversed and the case was remanded for further proceedings. Argued December 9, 2025—officially released April 28, 2026