Babes v. Bennett

• Decision Date: 22 December 1998
• Docket Number: (SC 15887)
• Citation: 721 A.2d 511,247 Conn. 256
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: EMILY BABES, ADMINISTRATRIX (ESTATE OF CHERYL BABES) v. STEVEN BENNETT ET AL.

247 Conn. 256

721 A.2d 511

EMILY BABES, ADMINISTRATRIX (ESTATE OF CHERYL BABES) v. STEVEN BENNETT ET AL.

(SC 15887)

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 24, 1998.

Officially released December 22, 1998.

Callahan, C. J., and Borden, Berdon, Katz and Palmer, JS. Kathleen L. Nastri, for the appellant (plaintiff).

David A. Haught, for the appellee (defendant state of Connecticut).

Opinion

CALLAHAN, C. J.

In accordance with Practice Book § 73-1 and General Statutes § 52-235 (a), the trial court granted the parties' joint interlocutory motion for reservation of a question of law to the Appellate Court. We subsequently transferred the reserved question to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 65-1 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c). The issue framed by the parties and reserved by the trial court for advice is: "When the [s]tate is sued pursuant to its waiver of sovereign immunity in [General Statutes] § 52-556,¹ is it immune from a reallocation of damages pursuant to the provisions of [General Statutes] § 52-572h (g)² in the event that it is a liable defendant and the plaintiff is unable to recover the damages awarded against another liable defendant?" We conclude that the state is not immune from reallocation of damages pursuant to § 52-572h (g) and answer the reserved question in the negative.

The following facts and procedural history are undisputed. On March 7, 1995, the plaintiffs decedent, Cheryl Babes, was driving her automobile westbound on Route 202 in New Hartford. Mark Brodeur, an employee of the defendant state of Connecticut (state), was driving a van westbound on Route 202 directly behind Babes' car. The vehicle being driven by Brodeur was owned and insured by the state. The named defendant, Steven Bennett, was traveling eastbound on Route 202, driving a pickup truck that was towing a flatbed trailer. The flatbed trailer became detached from Bennett's truck, crossed the center line of the road, entered the westbound lanes of Route 202 and collided with Babes' vehicle. Babes' car came to rest in the westbound lanes of Route 202. The van driven by Brodeur collided with Babes' vehicle, and Babes died as a result of the injuries she sustained in the two collisions.

The plaintiff, as administratrix of Babes' estate, subsequently filed the present wrongful death action, naming both Bennett and the state as defendants.³ Although the state generally is immune from suit, § 52-556 provides a cause of action against the state when any person is injured through the negligence of any state employee while operating a motor vehicle owned and insured by the state. See White v. Burns, 213 Conn. 307, 312, 567 A.2d 1195 (1990) (statutory waiver of sovereign immunity). The parties have stipulated that a jury probably would return a verdict in favor of the plaintiff against Bennett. Bennett has a $20,000 liability insurance policy. The parties have agreed that Bennett has no other assets that could be used to satisfy a judgment against him and that a jury probably would award the plaintiff damages that greatly exceed the $20,000 limit of Bennett's insurance policy. The parties also have agreed that, if the case were to go to trial, and the state were to be found liable, the plaintiff would seek reallocation to the state of any damages she is unable to collect from Bennett.

The parties, however, do not intend to go to trial. They have agreed to settle the matter. The amount the state is willing to pay the plaintiff depends upon whether the plaintiff is entitled to reallocate to the state any damages that cannot be collected from Bennett. The trial court deemed the resolution of this question sufficiently important to invoke the reservation procedures of Practice Book § 73-1 (e), which allow this court or the Appellate Court to answer specific reserved questions that are "reasonably certain to enter into the decision of the case, [if] it appears that their present determination would be in the interest of simplicity, directness and economy of judicial action."

Section 52-572h (g) provides that, in the event a plaintiff is unable to recover damages awarded against a particular defendant, damages are to be reallocated among other defendant tortfeasors that were found liable. At issue, therefore, is the applicability of § 52-572h (g) to an action brought against the state pursuant to § 52-556. The resolution of this issue is guided by well established principles of statutory construction. "The process of statutory interpretation involves a reasoned search for the intention of the legislature.... In other words, we seek to determine, in a reasoned manner, the meaning of the statutory language as applied to the facts of this case, including the question of whether the language actually does apply. In seeking to determine that meaning, we look to the words of the statute itself, to the legislative history and circumstances surrounding its enactment, to the legislative policy it was designed to implement, and to its relationship to existing legislation and common law principles governing the same general subject matter." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Bhinder v. Sun Co., 246 Conn. 223, 230-31, 717 A.2d 202 (1998).

Our analysis is more specifically illuminated by the well settled principle that when the state waives sovereign immunity by statute "a party attempting to sue under the legislative exception must come clearly within its provisions, because [s]tatutes in derogation of sovereignty should be strictly construed in favor of the state, so that its sovereignty may be upheld and not narrowed or destroyed .... Berger, Lehman Associates, Inc. v. State, 178 Conn. 352, 356, 422 A.2d 268 (1979). Where there is any doubt about [the] meaning or intent [of a statute in derogation of sovereign immunity, it is] given the effect which makes the least rather than the most change in sovereign immunity. White v. Burns, supra, 213 Conn. 312." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Federal Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Peabody, N.E., Inc., 239 Conn. 93, 101-102, 680 A.2d 1321 (1996). "The state's sovereign right not to be sued may be waived by the legislature, provided clear intention to that effect is disclosed by the use of express terms or by force of a necessary implication." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Struckman v. Burns, 205 Conn. 542, 558, 534 A.2d 888 (1987).

The parties do not dispute that the negligence of Bennett and Brodeur proximately caused Babes' injuries. Nor do they dispute that the state may be liable pursuant to § 52-556. The plaintiff contends, moreover, that the state's liability pursuant to § 52-556 for damages for those injuries is governed by the provisions of § 52-572h, particularly the reallocation provisions of § 52-572h (g). The state maintains, in contrast, that § 52-572h (g) does not apply to actions brought against the state pursuant to § 52-556 and, therefore, does not govern the award of damages in such actions. We agree with the plaintiff.

Before addressing the effect that § 52-572h (g) has in an action brought pursuant to § 52-556, we first must determine the nature of the cause of action that may be brought against the state pursuant to § 52-556. Our inquiry begins with the language of § 52-556, which has remained substantially unchanged since the statute first was enacted in 1927. See Public Acts 1927, c. 209. Section 52-556 provides in relevant part that "[a]ny person injured ... through the negligence of any state official or employee when operating a motor vehicle owned and insured by the state ... shall have a right of action against the state...." (Emphasis added.) With the enactment of § 52-556, therefore, the state expressly waived sovereign immunity in motor vehicle negligence actions; Capers v. Lee, 239 Conn. 265, 273, 684 A.2d 696 (1996); and specifically consented to suits based on "negligence." The legislature's use of the term "negligence" in § 52-556 manifests the obvious intention of the legislature to consent to suit against the state based on the breach of a common-law duty of care in the operation of state owned and insured vehicles by state employees and officials. See Sullivan v. State, 189 Conn. 550, 555 n.7, 457 A.2d 304 (1983) (§ 52-556 permits recovery against state on theory of vicarious liability for certain negligent acts by its agents, "a common-law liability borne by private employers").⁴ Because the language of § 52-556 expressly waives the state's immunity from suit based on common-law negligence, it appears that the legislature intended § 52-556 to incorporate the principles governing existing common-law negligence actions, and that the statute was not intended to create a separate statutory action to which different principles of liability and damages would apply.

We previously have distinguished between a waiver of immunity from suit and a waiver of immunity from liability for certain elements of damages. Specifically, we have concluded that the state's waiver of immunity from suit in General Statutes § 13a-144; see footnote 4 of this opinion; the defective highway statute, is not an implicit waiver of the state's immunity from liability for prejudgment interest;⁵ Struckman v. Burns, supra, 205 Conn. 559-60; or taxation of costs.⁶ State v. Chapman, 176 Conn. 362, 366, 407 A.2d 987 (1978); State ex ret. Foote v. Bartholomew, 111 Conn. 427, 432, 150 A. 308 (1930); State v. Anderson, 82 Conn. 392, 394, 73 A. 751 (1909).

Those conclusions, however, are based on the understanding that, if the legislature waives sovereign immunity by creating a separate statutory cause of action against the state, the parameters of that cause of action must be strictly construed. Moreover, the statute should not be read so as to have implicitly waived the state's immunity from the imposition, pursuant to separate and distinct statutes, of damages or costs in excess of those damages expressly authorized in the statute creating the cause of...