Harry v. Bidwell

• Decision Date: 21 November 1961
• Citation: 175 A.2d 704,149 Conn. 93
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: John HARRY, Building Inspector of the Town of Glastonbury v. Adriel J. BIDWELL et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 704

175 A.2d 704

149 Conn. 93

John HARRY, Building Inspector of the Town of Glastonbury v. Adriel J. BIDWELL et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Nov. 21, 1961.

Frank P. Lockard, East Hartford, for appellants (defendants).

Edward C. Wynne, Glastonbury, with whom, on the brief, were Milton Sorokin and Ethel S. Sorokin, Hartford, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before BALDWIN, C. J., and KING, MURPHY, SHEA and ALCORN, JJ. ALCORN, Associate Justice.

The plaintiff brought this action to enjoin the defendants' alleged violation of restrictions in the Glastonbury zoning regulations relating to the location and occupancy of trailers. The action followed a judgment rendered in an action brought by the present defendants in which they sought, inter alia, to have the applicable regulations declared void and unconstitutional. The issue was found against them. The objective in the present action is to enjoin the continuance of certain violations, and the commission of others, alleged to have occurred since the prior judgment and in defiance of it. The court found the issues in the present case in the plaintiff's favor and enjoined the defendants in certain particulars which are not necessary to delineate. The defendants have appealed.

The defendants assert that the principal issue is whether the question of the invalidity of the zoning regulations by reason of defective enactment procedures is res judicate. This issue is sought to be developed by attacks on the finding. Of the eleven assignments of error, five have not been pursued in the defendants' brief and must therefore be treated as abandoned. Stanley v. City of Hartford, 140 Conn. 643, 645, 103 A.2d 147. There are only two findings of subordinate facts which the defendants attack in their remaining assignments of error. An examination of the portions of the finding which are not attacked demonstrates that the defendants would gain nothing by eliminating those findings.

The defendants undertook to handle the case up to the point of an appeal without the aid of counsel. The purported pleading which they filed in answer to the plaintiff's complaint covers nearly thirteen printed pages of the record and is supplemented by an amendment covering nearly ten more pages. It is noteworthy for its irrelevancy, redundancy and defiance rather than for its effectiveness in defining any intelligible issue. Giving the pleading the construction most favorable to the defendants, we treat it as denying the plaintiff's right to the relief sought and asserting the invalidity and unconstitutionality of the applicable zoning regulations.

The unchallenged portions of the finding, so far as now material, may be summarized as follows. The defendant Dorothy H. Bidwell is the actual owner, by virtue of unrecorded deeds, of real property in Glastonbury which stands of record in the names of others. She and the defendant Adriel Bidwell own the trailers in issue. The real estate is in a residence A zone. The uses permitted in that zone do not include the occupancy or the storage of trailers or structural alterations in them. Glastonbury Zoning Regs. § 3.4 (1958, as amended). The zoning regulations provide for the issuance of permits for the occupancy of trailers in the rural residence zone or the rural zone but in no other zone. The defendants were the plaintiffs in an action brought in 1956 seeking, inter alia, a declaratory judgment that the regulations were 'void, unconstitutional and illegal.' The court rendered a final judgment in that action in January, 1959, to the effect that the regulations were constitutional and the present defendants had no right to utilize trailers at the locations in issue. During the pendency of that case, the zoning regulations were revised and the revised regulations were duly adopted. Glastonbury Zoning Regs. (1958). The revision reenacted the applicable trailer restrictions without change. Id. § 5.3. The defendants have however, continued to permit trailer occupancy at four separate locations on their property and have made structural changes in the trailers in violation of the regulations. Additional trailers have been placed at other locations on the property.

From these unchallenged subordinate facts, the court in the present case reached the unchallenged conclusion that the defendants violated the regulations by allowing continued occupancy of trailers at four different locations. The defendants assign error in the further conclusion that the storage of additional trailers, as well as the making of structural changes in the others, is a violation of the regulations. The ground of error is that the conclusion is not supported by the subordinate facts. This claim is refuted by a reference to the unchallenged subordinate facts recited above.

Only two other assignments of error as to the finding require comment. In one, the defendants assert that the court should have found as an undisputed fact that a zoning map which showed changes to become effective July 3, 1956, and on...