Ceci Bros., Inc. v. Five Twenty-One Corp.

• Decision Date: 10 February 2004
• Docket Number: (AC 23635)
• Citation: 840 A.2d 578,81 Conn. App. 419
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: CECI BROTHERS, INC. v. FIVE TWENTY-ONE CORPORATION ET AL.

81 Conn. App. 419

840 A.2d 578

CECI BROTHERS, INC. v. FIVE TWENTY-ONE CORPORATION ET AL.

(AC 23635)

Appellate Court of Connecticut

Argued September 15, 2003

Officially released February 10, 2004

Foti, Schaller and Dupont, Js.

Leonard A. Fasano, for the appellant (defendant Five Twenty-One Corporation).

Eric R. Posmantier, with whom, on the brief, was Andrew P. Nemiroff, for the appellee (plaintiff).

Opinion

DUPONT, J.

The defendant Five Twenty-One Corporation¹ appeals from the judgment of the trial court awarding damages in the amount of $117,214 for breach of contract for maintenance and gardening at a home owned by the defendant. The defendant makes several claims on appeal, specifically that (1) the discharge of the plaintiff's mechanic's lien, the subject of the only count of the plaintiff's original complaint,² was the equivalent of the granting of a motion to dismiss, therefore depriving the court of subject matter jurisdiction over a later amendment to the complaint, (2) the court improperly imposed interest as provided in General Statutes §§ 37-3a and 52-192a, and (3) the plaintiff's April 15, 1996 offer of judgment, made before the amendment to the complaint, at a time when the complaint solely sought to foreclose on a mechanic's lien, was not valid. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant to the defendant's appeal. The return date of the plaintiff's complaint was February 13, 1996. On or about March 15, 1995, the plaintiff and the defendant entered into a written agreement pursuant to which the plaintiff would provide landscaping services for a house in Greenwich owned by the defendant. The plaintiff and the defendant entered into another subsequent agreement on diverse days between May and July, 1995, for the construction of a visual obstruction, a berm, between the house and adjacent property, and the planting of trees as a visual obstruction. At some point, while performing work pursuant to the second agreement, a rock wall surrounding the defendant's property was knocked down to allow access to the property and was later rebuilt by the plaintiff. Both the first agreement and the second were the subject of the defendant's counterclaim, which alleged various breaches of contract, numerous torts and negligence of the plaintiff in rebuilding the wall.³

After a dispute about the work performed under the landscaping contract, the plaintiff stopped work at the request of the defendant and demanded payment. When the defendant did not pay for the work the plaintiff had done, the plaintiff filed a one count complaint dated January 26, 1996, seeking foreclosure of its mechanic's lien,⁴ and filed an offer of judgment on April 15, 1996. On June 24, 1996, the plaintiffs requested leave to amend their complaint to add counts of breach of contract and quantum meruit. The defendant objected to the request to amend on June 28, 1996. The defendant applied for a discharge of the mechanic's lien, which the plaintiff sought to foreclose in the first count of the amended complaint, on July 23, 1996. The court denied the application to discharge on July 16, 1997. That ruling of the trial court was reversed by this court; Ceci Bros., Inc. v. Five Twenty-One Corp., 51 Conn. App. 773, 774-75, 724 A.2d 541 (1999); and the case was remanded with direction to the trial court to grant the application to discharge the mechanic's lien. Id., 782.

On July 9, 1999, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss, claiming a lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the July 29, 1996 granting of the request to amend the plaintiff's complaint to add counts was subsequent to the filing of the defendant's application for a discharge of the mechanic's lien on July 23, 1996. The motion to dismiss was denied.

An attorney trial referee (referee) ruled on the remaining counts in the amended complaint, issuing his report on April 11, 2002. He determined that the plaintiff had proved damages in the amount of $44,248 and that the plaintiff was entitled to interest in accordance with § 37-3a.⁵ The referee also found that the plaintiff was negligent in its reconstruction of the wall on the premises of the defendant's house and therefore found in favor of the defendant on the counterclaim in the amount of $8700. In confirming the referee's findings, the court awarded interest for the plaintiff pursuant to § 37-3a, starting from the June 24, 1996 date of filing of the amended complaint, in the amount of $22,389. The court also ordered offer of judgment interest pursuant to § 52-192a in the amount of $50,577, with interest, again, running from the date of the filing of the amended complaint, for a total award for the plaintiff of $117,214.

I

The defendant claims that the discharge of the mechanic's lien functioned as if the court had granted a motion to dismiss and that the discharge of the mechanic's lien deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction over the remaining counts of the complaint. The defendant does not claim that the plaintiff originally could not have asserted several alternate causes of action based on the same facts as were the basis for the plaintiff's attempt to obtain a mechanic's lien. Rather, the defendant contends that because the request to amend the complaint to add claims for breach of contract and quantum meruit was granted on July 29, 1996, after the defendant had filed an application on July 23, 1996, to discharge the mechanic's lien, the amendment became void when the lien eventually was discharged on June 15, 1999.

"A determination regarding a trial court's subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law. When . . . the trial court draws conclusions of law, our review is plenary and we must decide whether its conclusions are legally and logically correct and find support in the facts that appear in the record." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Doe v. Roe, 246 Conn. 652, 660, 717 A.2d 706 (1998). While noting this standard of review, we are also aware of judicial policy disfavoring the termination of proceedings without deciding the merits of the dispute. A court should reach the merits of a case when it is possible within the guidelines of available procedural rules. Haigh v. Haigh, 50 Conn. App. 456, 463, 717 A.2d 837 (1998).

The plaintiff's original complaint sought, as relief, foreclosure of a mechanic's lien, attorney's fees, interest, costs, and such other legal and equitable relief as the court might deem just and proper. The construction of a pleading, here, the original complaint, to determine its scope, is for a court, which is not required to accept the construction proffered by a party. Home Oil Co. v. Todd, 195 Conn. 333, 340, 487 A.2d 1095 (1985). We do not accept the defendant's characterization of the complaint as limited to the foreclosure of the lien. Given the broad manner in which the original prayer for relief was framed, we conclude that the defendant, therefore, had notice that the plaintiff also might assert causes of action arising out of the same facts, in addition to the foreclosure of the mechanic's lien.

The plaintiff filed its request to amend on June 24, 1996, which was objected to by the defendant on June 28, 1996. The defendant did not assert a lack of subject matter jurisdiction in connection with the objection. The court granted the request to amend on July 29, 1996, but the amended complaint was date stamped June 24, 1996. The defendant's application to discharge the mechanic's lien was filed on July 23, 1996. Therefore, although the mechanic's lien, which the plaintiff sought to foreclose in the original complaint and in the first count of the amended complaint, was later discharged in February, 1999, by the decision of the Appellate Court and by the trial court on remand on March 10, 1999, as directed by the Appellate Court, the remaining counts by then had long been a part of an existing, operative complaint. After the Appellate Court rendered judgment, there were two operative counts of the complaint remaining to give the trial court subject matter jurisdiction.

We conclude that the court had subject matter jurisdiction to consider the counts of the amended complaint after the discharge of the mechanic's lien.

II

The defendant claims that the court and the referee improperly found the plaintiff to be entitled to § 37-3a interest on the basis of the $44,248 that was awarded to the plaintiff⁶ and instead should have subtracted the $8700 that was awarded to the defendant before calculating the amount of interest due the plaintiff.⁷ The defendant also claims that the court should have stayed the imposition of any interest during the pendency of its successful appeal.

"Prejudgment interest pursuant to § 37-3a has been applied to breach of contract claims for liquidated damages, namely, where a party claims that a specified sum under the terms of a contract, or a sum to be determined by the terms of the contract, owed to that party has been detained by another party." Foley v. Huntington Co., 42 Conn. App. 712, 740, 682 A.2d 1026, cert. denied, 239 Conn. 931, 683 A.2d 397 (1996). "[T]he determination of whether interest pursuant to § 37-3a should be awarded is a question for the trier of fact." Id., 738. "It is clear that Connecticut case law establishes that prejudgment interest is to be awarded if, in the discretion of the trier of fact, equitable considerations deem that it is warranted." Paulus v. LaSala, 56 Conn. App. 139, 147, 742 A.2d 379 (1999), cert. denied, 252 Conn. 928, 746 A.2d 789 (2000). Prejudgment interest in accordance with § 37-3a normally is awarded for money wrongfully withheld, and provides for interest on money that is detained after it becomes due and payable. Fitzpatrick v. Scalzi, 72 Conn. App. 779, 788, 806 A.2d 593 (2002).

The defendant's counterclaim, although related to performance of a contract, essentially was a claim in negligence, and prejudgment interest has been...