Berzins v. Berzins

• Decision Date: 17 September 2012
• Docket Number: No. 18708.,18708.
• Citation: Berzins v. Berzins, 306 Conn. 651, 51 A.3d 941 (Conn. 2012)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Mary BERZINS v. David BERZINS.

306 Conn. 651

51 A.3d 941

Mary BERZINS

v.David BERZINS.

No. 18708.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued April 27, 2012.

Decided Sept. 17, 2012.^*

Linda C. Lehmann, for the appellant(substitute defendantDaniel King).

Susan Boyan, Vernon, for the appellee(plaintiff).

ROGERS, C.J., and NORCOTT, PALMER, ZARELLA, McLACHLAN, EVELEIGH and HARPER, Js.^**

McLACHLAN, J.

In this certified appeal,¹we consider certain remedies available to the trial court to address litigation misconduct and we clarify the scope of our holding in Ramin v. Ramin,281 Conn. 324, 351, 915 A.2d 790(2007).Daniel King, the substitute defendant and administrator of the estate of David Berzins(administrator), appeals from the judgment of the Appellate Court affirming the trial court's award of attorney's fees to the plaintiff, Mary Berzins.Berzins v. Berzins,122 Conn.App. 674, 998 A.2d 1265(2010)( Berzins II ).The administrator argues that the trial court improperly relied on Ramin to grant the plaintiff's motion for sanctions and attorney's fees.The plaintiff responds that the trial court properly awarded attorney's fees pursuant to Ramin, and also argues that the judgment of the Appellate Court may be affirmed on the alternate ground that the trial court's award of attorney's fees constituted a proper exercise of its inherent authority to impose sanctions against a litigant for filing frivolous and duplicative motions.We agree with the administrator that the trial court's award of attorney's fees does not fall within the scope of Ramin, and we also conclude that the court did not act within its inherent authority in awarding attorney's fees because it failed to make a finding that the administrator had acted in bad faith as defined in Maris v. McGrath,269 Conn. 834, 845–46, 850 A.2d 133(2004).Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court and remand the case to the trial court for the purpose of making that determination.

The record reveals the following undisputed facts and procedural history.The parties were married on August 24, 1991.In May, 2005, the plaintiff commenced the present action seeking a legal separation from the named defendant, David Berzins(Berzins), and other relief.Berzins failed to file an appearance and the case was placed on the uncontested list for a January 26, 2006 hearing, at which Berzins failed to appear.At the hearing, the plaintiff filed a motion to amend her complaint to seek dissolution of the marriage.The court, Hon. Lawrence C. Klaczak, judge trial referee, rendered a default judgment against Berzins and dissolved the parties' marriage pursuant to the terms of the plaintiff's proposed orders.These orders required, inter alia, that Berzins “quitclaim his interest in the marital residence to the plaintiff” in exchange for a “mortgage note and deed payable to him for the sum of $140,000....”

While the plaintiff's action was pending, Berzins filed a separate action for dissolution.After prevailing at the January 26 hearing, the plaintiff moved to dismiss Berzins' dissolution action; her motion was granted on February 14, 2006.On February 23, 2006, Berzins filed a motion to open the judgment of dissolution arguing that he failed to file an appearance because the plaintiff had represented to him that she had withdrawn the action.Finding that Berzins “did not rely upon any representations of [the]plaintiff” in failing to file an appearance, the court, Swords, J., denied Berzins' motion to open the judgment.Berzins appealed, and the Appellate Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court.Berzins v. Berzins,105 Conn.App. 648, 654, 938 A.2d 1281, cert. denied, 289 Conn. 932, 958 A.2d 156(2008)( Berzins I ).

Berzins died on January 25, 2008, the same day that notice of the Appellate Court's judgment was sent to the parties.On March 17, 2008, the plaintiff moved to substitute the administrator as the defendant.On July 15, 2008, the administrator simultaneously moved to intervene in the litigation and to dismiss the appeal.The Appellate Court granted the administrator's motion to intervene and the plaintiff's motion to substitute the administrator as the defendant.That court treated the administrator's motion to dismiss as a motion to withdraw the appeal and granted the motion.The administrator then petitioned this court for certification, contending that he had “sought to intervene for the limited purpose of seeking dismissal of the appeal on the basis that a deceased party's estate representative lacks standing in a dissolution action” and that, “had he known that he had the standing to bring a motion for reconsideration or a petition for certification,”he“may not have filed” the motion to dismiss.We denied certification to appeal.Berzins v. Berzins,289 Conn. 932, 958 A.2d 156(2008).

Thereafter, on February 27, 2009, the plaintiff filed a motion requesting that the administrator be sanctioned and ordered to pay reasonable attorney's fees for the costs of defending against a number of postjudgment motions filed by the administrator.The administrator also filed a motion seeking sanctions.In their motions, both parties relied, inter alia, on the inherent authority of the trial court to impose sanctions against a litigant for a course of bad faith litigation misconduct.Following argument on the motions, the court, Shluger, J., found that the administrator had filed at least seven postjudgment motions against the plaintiff that were “either withdrawn or resolved in the plaintiff's favor.”²The court also expressly found a number of these motions to be “frivolous,”“duplicative” and without “basis in the law.”The trial court cited Ramin for the proposition that it “has the authority and discretion to award attorney's fees to a party who incurs those fees largely due to the other [party's] egregious litigation misconduct.”Subsequently, the court, Judge Klaczak, denied the administrator's motion for reconsideration and awarded attorney's fees of $12,584 to the plaintiff.That court later denied the administrator's second motion for reconsideration.

The administrator appealed from the decision of the trial court to the Appellate Court, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court, concluding that the trial court acted within its discretion in awarding attorney's fees pursuant to Ramin v. Ramin,supra, 281 Conn. at 324, 915 A.2d 790.Berzins II,supra, 122 Conn.App. at 681, 998 A.2d 1265.³In arriving at its holding, the Appellate Court explained that the trial court“reasonably could have concluded that the administrator engaged in egregious litigation misconduct” by filing “frivolous” and “duplicative” motions seeking to relitigate issues that had already been “resolved in the plaintiff's favor.”Id., at 684–85, 938 A.2d 1281.This appeal followed.

I

On appeal to this court, the administrator argues that the Appellate Court improperly relied on our holding in Ramin v. Ramin,supra, 281 Conn. at 324, 915 A.2d 790, in upholding the award of attorney's fees.Because we conclude that the Ramin rule is limited to discovery misconduct, we agree with the administrator.

The question of whether Ramin applies to the type of litigation misconduct that is at issue in the present case is a “question of law subject to our plenary review.”Fish v. Fish,285 Conn. 24, 37, 939 A.2d 1040(2008).“[T]he common law rule in Connecticut, also known as the American Rule, is that attorney's fees and ordinary expenses and burdens of litigation are not allowed to the successful party absent a contractual or statutory exception.”(Internal quotation marks omitted.)Commissioner of Environmental Protection v. Mellon,286 Conn. 687, 695, 945 A.2d 464(2008).One such statutory exception, codified at General Statutes § 46b–62, provides in relevant part that “the court may order either spouse ... to pay the reasonable attorney's fees of the other in accordance with their respective financial abilities and the criteria set forth in [General Statutes §] 46b–82.”Section 46b–82, in turn, permits the court to take into consideration such factors as “the length of the marriage, the causes for the ... dissolution of the marriage ... the age, health, station, occupation, amount and sources of income, vocational skills, employability, estate and needs of each of the parties and the award, if any, which the court may make pursuant to [General Statutes § 46b–81].”

We interpreted these statutory provisions in Maguire v. Maguire,222 Conn. 32, 608 A.2d 79(1992), to mean that “an award of attorney's fees in a marital dissolution case is warranted only when at least one of two circumstances is present: (1) one party does not have ample liquid assets to pay for attorney's fees; or (2) the failure to award attorney's fees will undermine the court's other financial orders.”Ramin v. Ramin,supra, 281 Conn. at 352, 915 A.2d 790(discussingMaguire v. Maguire,supra, at 44, 608 A.2d 79).In the present case, the trial court made no finding that the plaintiff either lacked “ample liquid assets to pay for attorney's fees,” or that “failure to award attorney's fees [would] undermine the court's other financial orders.”Therefore, § 46b–62 is not implicated in this appeal.

In Ramin,we recognized a “limited expansion” of Maguire“to provide a trial court with the discretion to award attorney's fees to an innocent party who has incurred substantial attorney's fees due to the egregious litigation misconduct of the other party when the trial court's other financial orders have not adequately addressed that misconduct.”Ramin v. Ramin,supra, 281 Conn. at 351, 915 A.2d 790.The scope of Ramin's“limited expansion” for egregious discovery misconduct must be understood in light of the particular circumstances at issue in that case.Although in isolation, the phrase “egregious litigation misconduct” could encompass conduct outside the context of discovery, the phrase must be understood in light of the entire ...