Sasso v. Ayotte
| Decision Date | 09 November 1967 |
| Citation | 155 Conn. 525,235 A.2d 636 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | Charles L. SASSO, Jr. v. Alcide AYOTTE et al. |
Thomas L. Brayton and John D. Mahaney, Waterbury, for appellant (plaintiff).
Walter R. Griffin, Waterbury, for appellees (defendants).
Before ALCORN, HOUSE, THIM, RYAN and COVELLO, JJ.
The plaintiff instituted this action seeking damages. He alleged that, because of the unskilful and negligent manner in which the defendants had drilled a well on the plaintiff's property, the well water had become contaminated.
The case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff against both defendants. On motion by the defendants, a judgment notwithstanding the verdict was rendered in their behalf. From this judgment the plaintiff has appealed. He asserts that there was sufficient evidence from which the jury could reasonably have concluded that the defendants had drilled the well in an unskilful and negligent manner and therby exposed the well to contamination.
In reviewing the action of the court in rendering the judgment, we consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Pelletier v. Bilbiles, 154 Conn. 544, 546, 227 A.2d 251; Petrizzo v. Commercial mercial Contractors Corporation, 152 Conn. 491, 499, 208 A.2d 748.
The jury could reasonably have found the following facts: In April, 1962, the plaintiff and the defendants entered into a written agreement whereby the defendants agreed to construct a house for the plaintiff on Lynwood Drive in Wolcott. In connection therewith, the defendants undertook to provide a well on the premises.
The construction of the house, including the drilling of the well, was completed in July, 1962. The plaintiff and his family took possession of the house in the latter part of that month. After the plaintiff and his family moved into the house and began to use the water which the well provided, the general health of the family began to worsen.
The plaintiff's well was in his front yard. In January, 1963, the plaintiff asked the defendant Louis Albert about the location of the septic tank which serviced the house next door which was uphill and to the left of the plaintiff's house. Albert told the plaintiff that the septic tank was located in the yard in front of that house and that the plaintiff's well had been placed fifty feet from that tank.
For some weeks the plaintiff noticed that the water being drawn from his well was foamy. The situation grew worse. In June, 1963, a toilet fixture became stuck and the continuous water flow caused the water to foam so much that the foam overflowed from the toilet bowl and tank onto the bathroom floor. The plaintiff notified Albert of this occurrence. Albert, after viewing the situation, agreed with the plaintiff that detergents were causing the foam. The plaintiff then had the well water analyzed. The analysis indicated that the water contained not only detergents but also organic waste materials, which indicated that the well was being polluted by seepage from a waste disposal system. The plaintiff notified the defendants of the pollution and requested that they remedy the situation. They refused to take any action. The plaintiff then employed John Sima, a well driller, to ascertain the source of the pollution and to correct the condition.
Sima uncovered the well which the defendants had provided. He measured its depth to be 115 feet. He bailed the water out of the well and found it was 'nothing but suds.' Both Sima and the plaintiff inspected the wall of the well with the aid of a mirror. This inspection disclosed that the metal casing which had been used in drilling the well extended only nineteen feet into the well. About eleven feet below the end of the casing was an irregular and broken formation of rock. Foamy water was entering the well from what appeared to be a fracture or jagged opening in this formation.
After making these observations, Sima then took steps to correct the situation. First, he pulled the nineteen-foot casing out of the well. Then he reamed the well hole out from six to eight inches in deameter down to a point forty-eight feet below the surface of the land. At that point he felt that he had reached a solid rock ledge. He then lowered a new metal casing into the well and sealed the casing off at the forty-eight-foot level where it was seated on the solid ledge. Sima then proceeded to clean out the well hole. After the cleaning was accomplished, the well remained dry, which indicated that the only water which had been entering the well had been coming from the rock fracture at the thirty-foot level and that this had now been effectively sealed off. Sima then proceeded to drill for a new source of water, which was found at the 350-foot level. This water was potable. After the...
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Scribner v. O'Brien, Inc.
...139 Conn. 301, 304, 93 A.2d 292; see also Kaplan v. Merberg Wrecking Corporation, 152 Conn. 405, 410, 207 A.2d 732.' Sasso v. Ayotte, 155 Conn. 525, 529, 235 A.2d 636, 638. When the defendants undertook to erect a dwelling and provide a driveway for the plaintiffs they were under a duty to ......
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...(1975). A party may be liable in negligence for the breach of a duty which arises out of a contractual relationship. Sasso v. Ayotte, 155 Conn. 525, 235 A.2d 636 (1967). See also Tipton v. Glower, 67 N.M. 388, 356 P.2d 46 Moreover, the instruction did not, by any stretch of the imagination,......
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...exercise that degree of care which a skilled workman of ordinary prudence would exercise in similar circumstances. See Sasso v. Ayotte, 155 Conn. 525, 235 A.2d 636 (1967); 17 Am.Jur.2d, Contracts § 371 (1964). Under these circumstances the trial judge acted properly in rejecting the propose......
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