Wright v. Dzurenda

Citations

• 207 Conn. App. 228

Syllabus

The plaintiff, an incarcerated individual, sought a declaratory judgment and punitive damages against the defendant B, an employee of the Department of Correction, claiming that B had retaliated against him for filing a grievance against her for allegedly denying him access to type legal documents on the facility's typewriter, which he claimed was a denial of access to the courts in violation of the federal constitution. In B's answer, she asserted the special defense of failure to exhaust administrative remedies, pursuant to federal statute (§ 42 U.S.C. § 1997e (a)). At B's request, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing, prior to the start of trial, regarding B's defense of failure to exhaust. The trial court granted B's motion to dismiss, concluding that because the plaintiff had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies under the department's grievance system, it lacked subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to § 42 U.S.C. § 1997e (a). On the plaintiff's appeal to this court, held: 1. This court declined to review the plaintiff's unpreserved claim that the trial court erred in determining that he had failed to exhaust his adminis- trative remedies by not filing a second grievance regarding B's alleged retaliatory conduct pursuant to the department's grievance procedure, as this claim was not raised before the trial court: moreover, this court declined the plaintiff's request to review his unpreserved claim under the plain error doctrine, as the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that there was an error so clear and obvious as to warrant the extraordinary remedy of reversal, and beyond the plaintiff's unsupported assertions that the circumstances of his case were extraordinary because the trial court and B overlooked controlling case law, the plaintiff provided little to no analysis of this unpreserved claim under the plain error doctrine. 2. The plaintiff could not prevail on his claim that the trial court erred in considering B's special defense that the pl