USAA Federal Savings Bank v. Gianetti

Citations

• 197 Conn. App. 814

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendant. The trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for sum- mary judgment as to liability and rendered judgment of strict foreclosure. The trial court then granted the plaintiff's motion to strike a counterclaim filed by the defendant and denied the defendant's motion to open the judgment, and the defendant appealed to this court. Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion to open the judgment of strict foreclosure as the court acted well within its discretion in determining that the defendant had not established good cause for opening the judgment: although the defendant pleaded that he informed the court through a colleague at the earliest opportunity that he could not attend the hearing on the motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure due to medical reasons, he acknowledged that the transcript of the hearing in question did not reflect that any such information had been received by the court; moreover, the court did not receive any information about why or how the defendant's failure to attend court that day had prevented him from making any material input to the court's decision whether to grant the plaintiff's motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure. 2. This court did not address the defendant's claim challenging, on due process grounds, the manner in which his motion to open was adjudi- cated, as that claim was not preserved for appellate review because it was not been presented to and decided by the trial court. 3. This court did not review the defendant's claim that the trial court erred in adjudicating the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, the defendant having failed to timely appeal from the rendering of the underlying judgment of strict foreclosure, which was based on the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. 4. This court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the defe