United Cleaning & Restoration, LLC v. Bank of America, N.A.

Citations

• 225 Conn. App. 702

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages from the defendant for an alleged breach of contract and for unjust enrichment in connection with the plaintiff's restoration of a property that had been damaged by a fire. L, the property owner, financed his purchase of the property with a mort- gage loan that the defendant serviced. In addition, L obtained a home- owners insurance policy for the property from N Co. After the fire, L filed a claim with N Co. N Co. paid out insurance proceeds on the claim, which, in accordance with the loan, were held by the defendant to pay, on behalf of L, for repair and restoration of the property. L entered into a contract with the plaintiff to make repairs to the property in exchange for payments from the proceeds. Less than one year later, when the plaintiff's repair work was approximately 50 percent completed, L died. Although the defendant previously had made multiple disbursements out of the proceeds to the plaintiff as it made repairs, the defendant ceased paying the plaintiff following L's death. At the request of T, a comortgagor and coexecutor of L's estate, the defendant applied the remaining proceeds to pay down the outstanding mortgage loan balance in connection with the sale of the property. The plaintiff claimed that it was an intended third-party beneficiary of the mortgage, that the defendant violated the terms of the mortgage when it applied the pro- ceeds to the outstanding mortgage loan balance instead of paying the proceeds to the plaintiff for the work it had completed, and that its repair work had benefited the defendant by enhancing the marketability of the property to its detriment. The defendant filed a motion for sum- mary judgment as to both counts of the complaint, arguing that there was no genuine issue of material fact that the defendant was not a party to the proceeds contract and that the plaintiff was not a party to the note or the mortgage, that the express language of the note and the mortgage demonstrate