U.S. Bank Trust, National Assn. v. Shuey

Syllabus

The defendants appealed from the trial court's judgment of foreclosure by sale rendered for the plaintiff. They claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly dismissed their counterclaim for lack of standing because, con- trary to the conclusion reached by the court, they were not required to identify the counterclaim as an asset on a bankruptcy petition they had filed prior to the foreclosure proceeding. Held: The trial court properly considered the defendants' special defense of unclean hands and determined that the defendants had not sustained their burden of producing evidence that supported that defense and created a genuine issue of material fact, there having been no basis in the record for the defendants' claim that the court determined that their defense had been pleaded insufficiently. The trial court properly rendered summary judgment for the plaintiff, as the defendants did not meet their burden of providing an evidentiary basis to establish the existence of a genuine issue of material fact as to their unclean hands special defense. The trial court properly determined that the counts of the defendants' coun- terclaim, sounding in a violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (§ 42-110a et seq.), negligence, and misrepresentation and fraud, existed as recognized causes of action at the time the defendants filed their bank- ruptcy petition, and all counts of the counterclaim had accrued prior to the filing of their bankruptcy petition and, thus, remained property of the bankruptcy estate. The trial court properly dismissed the defendants' counterclaim because the defendants were required to schedule the counterclaim as an asset when they filed their bankruptcy petition and their failure to do so deprived them of standing to assert the counterclaim in the foreclosure proceeding. Argued October 9, 2024—officially released May 20, 2025