Bradford v. Brennan

• Decision Date: 23 October 1992
• Docket Number: No. 79581,79581
• Citation: 631 A.2d 1165,42 Conn.Supp. 534
• Court: Connecticut Superior Court
• Parties: , 86 Ed. Law Rep. 276 Wesley BRADFORD et al. v. Francis R. BRENNAN et al.

Page 1165

631 A.2d 1165

42 Conn.Supp. 534, 86 Ed. Law Rep. 276

Wesley BRADFORD et al. v. Francis R. BRENNAN et al.

No. 79581.

Superior Court of Connecticut,

Judicial District of Waterbury.

Oct. 23, 1992.

Drubner, Hartley & O'Connor, Waterbury, for named plaintiff et al.

[42 Conn.Supp. 535] Corporation Counsel of the City of Waterbury, for named defendant et al.

Cotter, Cotter & Sohon, Bridgeport, for defendant Robert Andrew Batters.

BLUE, Judge.

In 1863, the Connecticut Supreme Court stated that when a town is sued for damages, a resident and taxpayer of that town is disqualified from being a juror in the case. Bailey v. Trumbull, 31 Conn. 581, 582 (1863). Although Bailey did not cite authority for this rule, it was consistent with the common law of the time. See S. Thompson & E. Merriam, A Treatise on the Organization, Custody and Conduct of Juries (1882), p. 185. In modern times, Bailey has been largely forgotten. Although its rule is occasionally followed, it is, in practice, rather common for jurors to sit, without objection, on cases involving the towns in which they reside. Bailey, however, has never been overruled. Now, two different parties in this personal injury case have dramatically called the spirit of Bailey from the ancient mists. They seek to have all residents and taxpayers of the city of Waterbury categorically disqualified from jury service in the present case. The question before the court is whether this venerable authority, duly summoned, must be obeyed.

This is a case involving a serious personal injury in which the city of Waterbury and one of its employees are named as codefendants. The named plaintiff, Wesley Bradford, alleges that in 1985 he was a student at Kennedy High School, a public high school in Waterbury. While he was in a school lavatory, a fellow student, Andrew Batters, threw a firecracker in his direction. The firecracker exploded near Bradford's ear, causing him to lose permanently a good part of his hearing. He has sued Batters, the city of Waterbury, and the assistant principal of the school, Francis R. Brennan. Brennan is alleged to have been negligent in his supervision of the lavatory, and the city of Waterbury is being sued under the theory of respondeat superior.

At the commencement of jury selection, Bradford moved to have all Waterbury residents and taxpayers disqualified from jury service in his case, citing what he considers to be their direct or indirect pecuniary interest in its outcome. The interest asserted is two-fold. First, Bradford claims that a substantial judgment against the city will result in an increase in municipal taxes and a decline in municipal services affecting all residents, taxpayers and nontaxpayers alike. Second, Bradford cites the ancient Connecticut doctrine that "execution upon a judgment against a town may be levied on the property of any one of its inhabitants. Beardsley v. Smith, 16 Conn. 368, 376 [1844]." Nichols v. Ansonia, 81 Conn. 229, 235-36, 70 A. 636 (1908). Batters has "In Connecticut, the disqualification of a juror may be based upon the General Statutes or upon the rules of the common law." Johnson v. New Britain General Hospital, 203 Conn. 570, 580, 525 A.2d 1319 (1987). The principal statute to address the disqualification of jurors is General Statutes § 51-217(c)(1). Under § 51-217(c)(1), a person is disqualified to serve as a juror if he or she exhibits some "quality" that will impair the capacity to serve as a juror, has a felony conviction, is unable to speak English, holds a high ranking governmental position, or has a physical or mental disability. The statute does not address the particular disqualification asserted here, but little can be drawn from this omission because the statute only describes conditions that preclude jury service in all cases, rather than conditions (such as kinship to a party) that preclude jury service in a particular case.

                joined in this motion, claiming that jurors with this pecuniary interest will be more likely to shift the blame from the city and its employee to him.   Brennan and the city oppose the motion
                

The present case is, therefore, controlled by the common law. Ascertaining the common law on this subject, however, is not an easy or mechanical matter. Bailey, no doubt, provides a hint, but it is not a secure foundation for the sweeping motion now before the court. Even more importantly, neither the law nor society have stood still since Bailey was decided. Significant legal and demographic developments in the last century strongly militate against the proposal advanced here. If the motion now before the court is to be correctly decided, a number of factors must be taken into account: (1) the common law background to Bailey; (2) Bailey and its progeny in Connecticut; (3) the development of the law in other states; (4) constitutional considerations concerning jury selection; (5) the execution of a potential judgment; (6) demographic changes; and (7) given these other considerations, the degree to which Bailey is controlling. These factors will be reviewed in order.

I THE COMMON LAW BACKGROUND

Writing in the early seventeenth century, Sir Edward Coke listed certain relationships that would support a principal challenge to a juror. One of these involved residents of municipalities. "If a body politick ... bring any action that concernes their body politick ... if the juror be of kindred to any that is of that body (although the body politick ... can have no kindred) yet for that those bodies consist of naturall persons, it is a principall challenge." E. Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628), p. 157.

No serious judicial consideration was given to this statement for over a century. In 1766, however, Lord Mansfield decided the celebrated case of Hesketh v. Braddock, 97 Eng.Rep. 1130 (1766). The plaintiffs in Hesketh were treasurers of the city of Chester who alleged that the defendant, a grocer, had breached a municipal law prohibiting nonresidents from selling goods at retail within the city. The defendant objected that the sheriff and the jury were freemen in the city. Mansfield opined that "any degree, even the smallest degree of interest in the question depending, is a decisive objection...." Id., 1135. The objection to the jury, however, was sustained on a relatively narrow ground. "The exclusion of foreigners is a monopoly to the freemen themselves.... And in this action, the very freemen who were to gain by securing this monopoly, were the jury to determine it. Therefore, every freeman had an interest and bias in the matter of the issue to be tried in this cause." Id., 1135-36.

These early authorities were concerned with cases in which a municipality was a plaintiff. Their concern was not that the residents of the municipality have a financial interest in the outcome of the case, but rather that, when the very object of the suit is to assert the rights of residents, the residents by definition have an interest in the outcome of the case. When, a century after Hesketh, an attempt was made in the In 1848, John Martin, a resident of Ireland, (then under English rule) was convicted by a Dublin court of treason for writing certain unwelcome articles in a publication called the Irish Felon. He brought a writ of error to the Court of Queen's Bench complaining that a juror had been interested in his conviction by reason of a charter of Henry V granting to the city of Dublin the goods of felons convicted within the city. His argument, essentially, was that as a result of the city's financial gain, the juror's taxes would diminish, and the juror consequently had an interest in the case prohibited by Hesketh. This argument was rejected. The court noted that "it is possible that the juror may die, or cease to be a proprietor of rateable property, before a rate is imposed.... [I]t is utterly impossible to discover, describe, or define any actual interest in the result of a suit which is to depend and arise on such a series of contingencies as this.... [T]here is not any resemblance between this and any decided case where an objection to a juror ... was allowed on the ground of interest.... Authority establishes the distinction between present and actual interest, and that which is future and contingent." Queen v. Martin, 6 John Wallis, State Trials N.S., 925, 1097-98 (1848).

British courts to preclude from jury service municipal residents with a supposed financial interest in the outcome of the case, the argument was decisively rejected.

No English court since Martin has considered a challenge to residents of municipalities. In the early nineteenth century in this country, however, a number of state courts categorically disqualified residents of municipalities from sitting in cases where their municipalities were parties on the ground that jurors "must be omni exceptione majores; free from every objection, and wholly disinterested." Wood v. Stoddard, 2 Johns. 194, 195 (N.Y.1807). The homage to impartiality in Hesketh was frequently cited, but its actual holding was not. A list of citations may be found in annot., 81 A.L.R.2d 708, 711-12 (1962).

II Bailey AND ITS PROGENY

Bailey v. Trumbull, supra, was a highway defect case against the town of Trumbull. The verdict was for the plaintiff. After the verdict, the town moved to arrest the judgment "on the ground that one of the jurors who tried it, and joined in the verdict, was the owner of real estate in the defendant town, and a taxpayer therein." Id., at 582. The court noted that "the amount of his property there, some $3,000, probably made him a larger landowner than a majority of the inhabitants of the town...." Id., at 583. The court stated that "no doubt this was such a disqualification of the juror, that, had the fact come to the knowledge of the court before the trial commenced, he would have been set aside and his place supplied by another." Id., at 582. Because, however,...